They Call This Winning?
by abraxis
Summary: Just because the war is over doesn't end 'battle mode' for everyone - especially if you've been in 'battle mode' for one reason or another since you were 1 1/2 years old.
1. Chapter 1

They Call This Winning?

By Abraxisdragon

Beta: Tar Irene

All the usual disclaimers. No infringements intended. All my blood, sweat and tears for nothing but personal enjoyment.

Warnings:

Part I – Chapters 1 thru 7

Mention of bisexuality, inference of M/M sex.

Spoilers for all seven books except for the epilogue in Book 7 – That bit of clichéd fluff didn't happen! This story begins immediately after Chapter 36 of "The Deathly Hallows". Sorry, but fate (and this author) have different plans for Harry and company. You don't come out of 'war' mode just because the war is over.

A/N: Another way that this story is not canon compliant (according to an interview with JKR) is that Harry doesn't lose his ability to speak Parseltongue. It is just too useful to give up and snakes can be really fun characters. Since there is so much cross marriage in the wizarding world we will just speculate that he could have had a recessive gene for the talent and his possession by Voldemort simply activated it. Or… like any language, Parseltongue once learned, even magically, is not forgotten. After all, JKR had Ron Weasley mimic it to open the Chamber of Secrets in Book 7. Take your pick or invent your own.

Chapter 1 – The Beginning of Strange New Connections

(Late in the day – May 2, 1998)

… … "_And quite honestly," he _(Harry Potter)_ turned away from the painted portraits, thinking now only of the four-poster bed lying waiting for him in Gryffindor Tower, and wondering whether Kreacher might bring him a sandwich there, "I've had enough trouble for a lifetime." _(JKR – the last paragraph of "Chapter 36 - The Deathly Hallows".)

Harry almost immediately discovered just how naïve this thought was as his path to Gryffindor Tower led past the main entry hall just outside the doors of the Great Hall where he encountered a group dressed in red Auror robes dragging Lucius, Narcissa and Draco Malfoy toward the outer doors of Hogwarts.

Two things about this scene sent waves of hot anger burning through Harry. The first was that the men were brutalizing the helpless trio using the long-chain shackles attached to their wrists and ankles partly to jerk them along, but mostly to send them roughly to the floor and then using stinging hexes and booted feet to make them struggle to stand again laughing and jeering as Lucius and Draco tried to protect Narcissa with their own bodies. The second thing that angered him was the condition of the Aurors and their robes. They were clean and fresh with no sign of battle damage. But what set him into action was the pleading eyes of Narcissa Malfoy suddenly fixed on him as she cried out.

"Harry Potter! I lied to _Him_ for you! Help us!"

Both wands suddenly in his hands, the holly in his right and the elder in his left as if an autonomic reflex, he stalked toward the group.

"Let them go! Now!"

A fleshy-faced man, whose Auror robes seemed ill fitted on a too soft body, turned to face Harry.

"You stay out of this, boy. This scum is Auror business."

Then the man made a gross mistake. He pointed his wand at Harry.

The intent to petrify the group was a mere thought that had not yet formed the words, much less sent any command to Harry's tongue, when the spell flashed from both his wands simultaneously and the Entry Hall was littered with toppling, red-robed bodies. The three Malfoys who were already on the floor were frozen with no further movement, Lucius and Draco both arched protectively across Narcissa.

"Oh, Harry! What have you done?"

"Bloody brilliant, mate. Did you see that Hermione? Both wands and wordless!"

"Ron! He petrified AURORS!"

"Oh, yeah … well, it was still brilliant … wasn't it …?" Ron's voice tapered off into a mumble at Hermione's strident expression of rebuke.

The voices startled Harry. He had forgotten that Ron and Hermione were so close behind him. Their presence brought his mind back from battle mode and into sharp focus. Oh, shite! What to do now? All Harry could think of was to go with his first thoughts about the Aurors.

"Hermione, look at their robes. They couldn't have been in the battle. And how they were treating shackled prisoners. I don't think real Aurors, the kind ofAurors Kingsley would have, would behave that way. Go get Professor McGonagall. Ron, help me get the Malfoys out of there and revive them."

Hermione hurriedly scampered off, a look of relief on her face at Harry's command to call for 'higher authority' to deal with the problem. Harry couldn't suppress a sharp pang of disappointment. What had happened to the Hermione who had stood strong, making life and death decisions daily, for the past year? Why was she acting more like she had in their First Year?

Ron, however, stood stubbornly in place, glaring at the petrified family.

"I say leave the Death Eater trash there until Professor McGonagall gets here!"

As much as Harry wanted to immediately check the Malfoys for injuries he could see that Ron was right, but for a very different reason than the hatred fueling his red-headed friend. The Petrificus spell would keep any injuries from worsening and the image of the father and son struggling to protect their wife and mother was a much stronger argument presented this way.

"Okay, but see if you can get someone from the infirmary down here in case they are really hurt."

"They're busy with wounded of our own. There's a medi-wizard assigned to the holding cells at the Ministry that'll do for the likes of them."

Harry's patience with Ron snapped and he spoke a little more sharply than he had actually intended. "Just do it Ron. If they aren't real Aurors, we don't know what condition the Ministry is in right now." Of course, Harry thought to himself, if they were real Aurors then conditions at the Ministry were shite no matter who was in control.

Ron looked like he still wanted to argue but, to Harry's relief, seemed to recognize that Harry was close to the end of this tether and turned and huffed off up the stairs toward the infirmary instead. Now the question was whether he would make any real effort to do as Harry asked him or just loiter around in the halls until he thought he had been gone long enough to make a good excuse of it. Well, not much change there. Harry had never trusted that the 'new', 'cooperative' Ron that had returned to their camp would be a permanent thing. Ron had always reverted to his base personality, his prejudices engaging before his brain, and had to learn the same lessons over and over again throughout their friendship. But did he ever really learn, when it was just cycle after cycle of blow-up, sulk, apology and reconciliation?

Harry didn't have to wait long for Hermione to return with McGonagall, a man wearing Auror red close on their heels. In contrast to the ones lying all over the hall, this man looked tough and lean and fatigued. His robes were disheveled, his boots scuffed and both were stained with mud or worse. Either Hermione or McGonagall must have passed on Harry's suspicions because the man gave Harry a sharp speculative glance and immediately began to examine the fallen red-robbed figures.

"Well this one works in Magical Games and Sports." Then indicating the fleshy-faced leader, "And I think this one is a clerk in Magical Transportation … some office on that level, anyway." He continued to the other side of the hall. "Much the same here. No one I recognize as having ever been in the Auror Division before … before they took over. Might be that Kingsley has recruited some extra help to direct things at the Ministry but he wouldn't be sending untrained ones outside of it. They could also be leftovers from … them, trying to prove that they're not. I need to check this out." The man finally looked up at Harry "Good call, Mr. Potter." and hurried off.

McGonagall turned to Harry.

"I'm sure they will send someone to sort this out and collect the Malfoys as soon as they can. We'll just leave the lot petrified until they do. I hate to ask you to do more Harry, but I'm up to my eyebrows with clearing out every one not necessary to deal with the … the aftermath. Could you stand watch over them until I can find someone else to do so?"

And that should have been the end of it …

… but Harry couldn't keep Narcissa's words from echoing through his thoughts.

No matter that she had first asked for word of Draco's survival as barter, she had still saved his life in the forest and, with her plea for his help, she had effectively called in that life-debt. The broken, helpless expression on Lucius' face and the terrified one on Draco's finished making up his mind.

"Professor, I owe Mrs. Malfoy a life-debt and she asked for my protection for all of them. I …."

McGonagall laid a motherly - well, as vaguely maternal as Harry had ever experienced from the austere Scottish woman - hand on Harry's shoulder.

"Whatever she did, you paid the debt when you saved them just now. You don't owe them anything more."

Harry shook his head.

"She lied to Voldemort. She stood right there in front of that snake-faced monster and told him I was dead when she knew I wasn't. They might need medical care and I … I want custody of them."

Harry didn't know where that last thought had come from but, as he blurted it out, it seemed like the right thing to do. McGonagall very obviously didn't agree. She got that rather pinched look of disapproval on her face that Harry had come to know all too well over the years.

"That, Mr. Potter, is complete folly!" Then her voice softened a bit, "You must allow the proper authorities deal with this. I'm sure that you will be allowed to speak at their trials. Narcissa, if she never received the Dark Mark, may not even be held for trial. Draco, because of his age, you may be able to help. But Lucius? The Wizengamot isn't going to let him off this time and rightly so."

Hard emerald eyes bored into hers.

"Then I'll remind them who's asking."

McGonagall pulled back from that intense stare.

"You don't want to take that attitude, Mr. Potter."

"What? It's all right for me to **die**, for me to **kill** … but **not** to **help someone**? Look at them!" Harry waved his hand toward the pitiful tableau of the Malfoys. "The only thing in their mind is to keep each other safe! They're not a threat now, not even Lucius."

At McGonagall's unequivocally dubious frown, he continued.

"You didn't see what I did through my connection to Voldemort. Lucius didn't want this anymore. He was nothing more than a prisoner in his own home after he escaped from Azkaban, just doing what he had to do to keep his family alive. He didn't raise a wand in the battle. Ok, I don't think that he regrets much of anything but Voldemort becoming such an insane bastard and, yeah, he needs to do something to payback all the things he did … maybe in ways that will teach him how wrong his way of thinking is. Rotting in prison or dead isn't going to do that. And seeing that happen to his father isn't going to do Draco any good either."

There was no softening in McGonagall's expression. Harry suddenly felt like that Firstie who stood in front of her trying to tell her that things were seriously mucked up about the Philosophers Stone. Only now, it wasn't some stupid rock. It was the whole wizarding world that was mucked up. Many of the thoughts that had plagued Harry during all those long fearful nights of the past year began to coalesce for him and Harry felt an angry desperation to make her, to make anyone, listen to him this time.

"Hasn't this war destroyed enough people, enough families? Are the Ministry and the Wizengamot just going to keep on doing the same thing Voldemort did? The same things that let him get so powerful in the first place? Keep feeding the hatred, keep tearing our world apart? Is this what I was willing to die for?"

"Or are they going to stop this stupid shite and build us a world honest and fair for everyone; where punishing the guilty has something to do with righting the wrongs they did not just taking revenge on them; where the next sociopath with delusions of godhood can't even get a good start at it because the government is doing what it should be doing rather than just whatever it thinks will keep it in office. You tell them they better figure it out because I'm done! Finished! I won't fight another Dark Lord for them!"

Minerva had the good conscience to feel a bit ashamed of herself for thinking that Harry had been threatening violence against the Wizengamot. However, no matter what he had done to rid them of Voldemort, to her he was still a child with no understanding of the realities of the adult world; especially the reality of a creature like Lucius Malfoy. Merlin! After what the boy had said during his duel with Voldemort she could finally accept that Albus had known what he was doing in trusting his ability to control Severus Snape, but that had been a wartime necessity. Which this wasn't! Not to mention, Lucius Malfoy wasn't Severus Snape! And Harry Potter certainly wasn't Albus Dumbledore!

She opened her mouth to tell him this when the hard, determined look on his face made it clear to her that this wasn't the right time to try and argue him out of such nonsense. She was weary to the bone. Let Shacklebolt deal with the boy's stubbornness. She quickly changed the direction of her argument.

"If you feel so strongly about this you can petition the Wizengamot for custody. I'm sure that Miss Granger can find some legal precedent. The old laws are full of such cases. They were mostly demands for monetary regress and recompense for damages but personal servitude of various degrees was allowed under certain circumstances. I'm sure she will find something that you could use." She withheld the fact that such servitude reparations had been forbidden during the Grindelwald trials but, justifying this deception by the fact that this piece of misdirection would keep the boy from doing anything rash, she continued "For now, we must cooperate with whatever decision Minister Shacklebolt makes. I'll return with someone to guard them as soon as I can."

As McGonagall walked away, shaking her head in frustration, Harry was still very conflicted as to what to do. Silent until now, Hermione finally spoke.

"Ron's not going to agree to this, Harry. Not for the Malfoys. He hates them too much."

She was right about Ron, of course. But how did Hermione, herself, feel?

"What about you?"

"I … I think he's wrong to hate so much … but you can't say he doesn't have good reasons. We all do. You most of all. I think that you are being foolish to take responsibility for them. Professor McGonagall is right. You've paid the life-debt by stopping those men from taking them. They don't deserve any more than that. Please, Harry, let the Ministry and the Wizengamot handle it. We're going to have enough to do just preparing for our N.E.W.T.s and putting our lives back together."

That last hit a wrong nerve with Harry. Ron and Hermione did have lives to 'put back together', families to fall back into. But what did he have? Who did he have? His parents? Dead. Sirius? Dead. Dumbledore? Dead. Remus? Dead. Snape? Dead. Even Hedwig … dead. It was not something he was ready to deal with now. The fate of the Malfoys was a much easier problem.

Considering his ignoble experiences with the members of both those wizarding institutions, other than Albus Dumbledore and Amelia Bones who were both dead now, Harry couldn't accept turning over the responsibility of his life debt to them.

Kingsley Shacklebolt certainly was no Fudge. But Scrimgeour hadn't been either and he still had made plenty of problems for Harry to protect his position as Minister. Kingsley had cooperated well enough with Harry as an Auror and member of the Order, but who could tell what he would do now that he was experiencing the power and, to be fair about it, the responsibility of being Minister? The Auror mindset was definitely more 'catch and punish' than 'rehabilitate'.

As for the Wizengamot, Harry didn't think they would approve of his plan any more than McGonagall had. He was pretty sure that the members who had suffered under Voldemort's regime would be after revenge, and those who hadn't would be looking to cover their own collaboration – not much chance for anyone named Malfoy either way.

And yeah, the Malfoys weren't on anyone's deserving list. But Narcissa had saved his life and that put her on his list. Her plea had put Lucius and Draco right there beside her. That made their future Harry's problem and his custody of them a necessity.

What was it that Uncle Vernon had said when Grunnings took over some smaller business and there was a threat of a government sanction over how they had done it? … 'Possession is 9/10ths of the law. When this all blows over we'll still own it.' … Wouldn't Harry stand a better chance of getting custody of the Malfoys if he already had it?

"Will you at least help me get them out of here before Ron gets back?"

The disapproval was too plain on Hermione's face and Harry had neither the time nor the energy for more argument. He stepped over the bodies of the possibly false Aurors, collecting the Malfoys' wands from the waistcoat of one as he went, to stand next to the frozen trio.

"Ok, you don't have to help me. But you and Ron can take over guarding these 'maybe' Aurors while I do what I have to do." Then in a much louder voice, "Kreacher!"

The ancient house elf appeared immediately.

"Can you take the Malfoys and me to some place safe and quiet?"

"Certainly, Master."

With a snap of the elf's fingers, the Entry Hall suddenly disappeared.

OOOOOOOOO

What Harry felt was nothing like apparition. Rather than the smothering, squeezing tube effect, it was more like becoming two dimensional - flat like a piece of parchment - then flatter still - like an ink line - followed by a blink of something Harry couldn't describe, because it felt more like having no body at all than anything else. And then the reverse - a line again, parchment again and then his normal self. But that normal self was now standing someplace else. And it hadn't been uncomfortable at all! Strange, yes, and a bit disorienting but not totally, grossly unpleasant like apparition.

His first reaction was "WOW!". His second, not unsurprisingly considering the way he hated portkeys and wasn't that much fonder of apparition or tumbling clumsily out of floos, was: "Kreacher, can you teach me how to do that?"

The elf looked totally shocked, and maybe a bit disapproving. "No wizard is ever asking a house elf for teaching!"

"Well, I am. That was brilliant! Much better than the way we apparate."

Kreacher's disapproval morphed into surprise at this compliment but this was quickly followed by apprehension.

"Kreacher does not know if a wizard can learn house elf magic, Master."

Harry hadn't meant to cause that reaction.

"Well, you think about it. If I can't, I can't, and that's all right. But I'd like to try if you can think of some way to teach me."

Turning his attention from the now very thoughtful elf, Harry truly became aware of his surroundings. It was a shock. He had expected Kreacher to take them somewhere within Hogwarts and this certainly wasn't that. Still, the room, with its long table, massive chandeliers and lavish decorations, did look familiar. In fact …

"Kreacher, where are we?"

The elf confirmed Harry's suspicions.

"Malfoy Manor, Master Harry. Kreacher could not think of any other truly safe place for them." Again the elf was anxious. "Is this wrong, Master?"

"No, no." Well, Harry couldn't fault the elf's reasoning. But what did he do now? "Do you know any healing, Kreacher? They might be injured."

"Yes, Master. House elves are able to heal but … most wizards are not knowing it … are not trusting us … with things of such importance."

"Well, I trust you. I'll un-petrify them and you can check them and heal anything you think might need healing."

Kreacher was playing with the fake Horcrux locket and avoiding looking directly at Harry. "They will not want it, Master."

The suddenly sullen tone of the elf's voice conveyed something more along the lines of 'they would rather be rotting in their graves than allow it' and 'they will curse any house elf who tries it'. Harry didn't have time for reasonable discussion so went directly to hard assurance.

"I didn't save them just to let them die from stupid prejudice. If they give you any trouble, I'll stupefy them." Harry pointed the holly wand at the trio, first removing the chains from their wrists and ankles and then removing his own paralysis charm.

Draco collapsed across his mother in a heap. Lucius managed to gracefully roll sidewise away from Narcissa without falling on her and then sat up and reached out to pull Draco off of her as well and assist her into a sitting position. Harry found himself fixed by weary and very wary, yet sharply intelligent, silver-gray eyes. There was also quite a bit of the same fear in them that he had seen in his visions of Voldemort's gatherings in this same room. It was confusing to Harry to have a man like Lucius Malfoy looking at him with the same emotions that Voldemort had evoked in the man.

"I am grateful for your aid, Mr. Potter. I … Well, we shouldn't impose further … Healing is probably not necessary …" Then, at the hardening expression on Harry's face and the twitch of his holly wand hand, Lucius surrendered to the situation.

"If you would permit it of course, I would prefer that your house elf attend to me first." Throughout this broken monologue, Lucius had been surreptitiously shifting his position on the floor to place himself between Harry and Kreacher and his wife and son. "… It is not prejudice, I assure you … It is as he stated. We have no experience with his kind of healing."

Shite! As shocking as Lucius' deference and capitulation was, that was overridden by another realization. Harry had forgotten that petrified people were still completely conscious of everything going on around them.

"Kreacher! Can you obliviate wizards?" The elf didn't seem to understand. "Erase a small piece of their memory … without damaging the rest of their mind?"

The elf was thoughtful for a moment. Then, he smiled … perhaps somewhat evilly. Harry was exasperated but still a little amused that _someone _was having fun in the middle of this confused mess.

"Oh yes, Master. If you order it, Master."

"Then pop back to Hogwarts, right now, and wipe everything that happened after I petrified them from the minds of all those men in the Entry Hall!"

"Before healing, Master?"

"Yes! But get back here as quickly as you can! And don't let anyone see you obliviate them!"

Kreacher immediately disappeared with the characteristic house elf 'pop' and Harry turned to find Lucius staring at him with a sardonically arched eyebrow. Harry couldn't keep a sheepish expression from coloring his face.

"Well … I trust Professor McGonagall and Hermione not to tell anyone but Kingsley Shacklebolt about what I did but if I want his cooperation it would be better he didn't have the problem of that lot screaming about it to anyone who'll listen."

Lucius' smile matched the eyebrow and he seemed to be a bit less wary, less fearful.

"Oh, I quite agree with your actions. It is only that I have suddenly realized that, while your choices are Gryffindor to the core Mr. Potter, your methods seem a touch more Slytherin than I would have expected. And this talent you have for... 'inspiring' house elves..." he admitted with a grimace, that might have been from pain, but Harry doubted it. "Having them rebel, attacking wizards and even admitting to abilities in healing and obliviation. I had thought Dobby's behavior an aberration but now Kreacher … so obviously not … at least not when it involves you. It gives me a glimmer of hope that you might be able to follow through on your intention to protect my wife and son. As for myself … I do not believe you are Slytherin enough for that. Still …perhaps it would not hurt to discuss the options."

There were too many strange ideas there, as strange as Lucius Malfoy seeming to take comfort and gain courage from Harry being more Slytherin than he had thought. The whole thing was … well, Harry guessed, it was a little 'too Slytherin' for him to get his only 'partially Slytherin' mind around. Also, as uncomfortable as it had made Harry for Lucius to be wary and fearful toward him just like he had been towards Voldemort, this renewal of the man's confidence, little as it was, only made him more uncomfortable for a total opposite reason. It reminded Harry too much of the man Lucius had been and might easily become again now that the threat of Voldemort was gone.

The man's casual and careless mention of Dobby didn't sit well with Harry either. The little elf had died for Harry. He had been brave and loyal because he chose to be and didn't deserve such a slur as 'aberration'.

However, before Harry could put enough coherence to these thoughts to form any response to Lucius, Kreacher returned and the healing commenced … with Lucius first, as the man had requested, since Harry didn't see any reason to push the issue.

Then, too quickly, another problem was added to the mix by a request from Narcissa while Kreacher was treating a reticent Draco; only Lucius' stern stare keeping the boy from attempting to escape the house elf's aid.

"Mr. Potter, I must ask you to allow me to fulfill a debt I owe to Severus Snape."

The totally useless death in the Shrieking Shack flashed behind Harry's eyes. As he answered Narcissa, he couldn't keep the futility of it from reflecting in his voice. "He's dead."

"Yes. I heard what you told … _Him _… during the duel. That is why I must ask you to allow me to see to the disposition of Severus' body per his wishes. It was what he requested of us in return for his having saved Draco. However, that will require that you retrieve the body. If it worries you to leave us unattended we will pledge our good behavior while you are doing so."

"If you heard what I said then you know that he was a traitor to Voldemort. How can I trust you to … to do right by him?"

It was Lucius who answered as Kreacher moved his attention from Draco to Narcissa. "Whatever he was to _Him, _he was a friend to us … as much as anyone in _His _inner circle could be … certainly more than any of the others … even those tied by blood."

The dark expression on Lucius' face left Harry with little doubt that if Mrs. Weasley hadn't dealt with Bellatrix during the battle Lucius wouldn't have allowed her to survive her 'Master' by any great length of time, even if he had to kill her with his bare hands like a muggle. The man now resembled the Lucius of old even more and Harry adjusted his grip on both his wands but then relaxed again as Lucius' anger morphed into determination as he continued speaking.

"Yet, had Severus done nothing further, he was all that stood between Draco and death for his failure to kill Dumbledore. That is a debt I owe him above all others. Surely you can understand that we can be trusted in this matter much more than … than, say, people like those from whom you have just rescued us."

The images Harry's imagination conjured of the possible ill treatment of Snape's body were sickening. Yes, this was something he must do. A decent burial was the least he could do for Dumbledore's spy, the other who had been Dumbledore's man through and through. Then, as he tried to think of a way to get to the bodies laid out in the Great Hall without causing any uproar or need for argument and explanations, he remembered that he hadn't seen Snape's body there. The sudden realization that only he, Ron and Hermione knew where Snape had died and that they hadn't given a single thought to taking care of Snape's body swamped Harry with guilt.

"Kreacher, are you finished healing them?"

"Yes, Master. There were no serious injuries."

"Then I need you to take me … " Harry felt like retching. "… to take me to the Shrieking Shack."

"Wait!" It was Narcissa who reached out to grasp Harry's wrist and prevent him from leaving. Her still beautiful, though haggard, face bore an expression of concern Harry had never thought to see directed at him from that source.

"You are quite young to be dealing with this, Mr. Potter, … if … if Severus still lies where he died. Please … please allow Lucius to accompany you."

OOOOOOOOO

Severus Snape did not lie in repose. He lay in the broken sprawl in which he had died. Still, there seemed to be an odd aura of peace about him, especially in the lax face, the once piercing and then, when he died, so empty eyes hidden behind relaxed lids as if in sleep. Harry was relieved that the man's eyes were not open and staring as they had been when he died.

For the first time in Harry's memory Snape actually looked his rather youthful - by wizarding standards - thirty-eight years. Maybe it was just the absence of his always vitriolic personality, but to Harry it seemed to be a continuation of the last, almost intimate, moments they had shared; as if somehow accomplishing that confession had relieved the man of years of burden and care. Pocketing his wands, he knelt beside Snape's body, reaching out a hand toward his face but not daring to actually touch him.

"I shouldn't have left him here."

Harry didn't realize he had spoken aloud until Lucius answered him.

"Perhaps. However, you did have a great many other things to deal with at the time. Also, it did keep him from being … disturbed. I do not think he would have faulted you for it." Strangely, Lucius' voice, always about as irritating as fingernails on chalkboard for Harry, was now calmly comforting.

Harry gave a choked half-sob, half-laugh.

"He could always find fault with me for anything … even just breathing. Merlin! It doesn't make any sense but … I think I'm going to miss him. He gave me some memories … when he was dying … things I needed to know … but personal stuff, too." Another choked laugh, "All those years he treated me like shite, did everything he could to make me feel worthless yet, in the end, he … it seemed important to him that I … that I understood him … that what I thought about him mattered to him. I … I haven't had time to think about that, to understand it."

Strong hands lifted Harry to his feet and moved him away from the body.

"Severus was never an easy man to know. You need not worry. I will attend to his body as he wished, in secret with no public knowledge of it. As for you, Mr. Potter, it … it has been a long … a long and terrible day and you should return to Hogwarts, to your friends … to rest and do your thinking. I will await you at my manor when you are refreshed. You have my vow on it."

When Harry made no answer, he continued, "My vow and more. By all rights, your debt to my wife need not have been extended to me. If that hold on my honor does not reassure you, be reminded that you are my best chance to avoid Azkaban or worse and that I will certainly exhaust that possibility before I choose the life of a wanted fugitive."

Oddly, it was more reassuring to Harry that Lucius had a self-serving motive for keeping his word. Knowing that the man would need his wand to apparate and knowing that they had a number of spare wands anyway – old pureblood habit that – he handed back Lucius' wand, along with Narcissa's and Draco's. Harry watched him kneel, take Snape's body in his arms and apparate.

Afterward, Harry stood, staring at the remaining blood pool, too weary to move. There really didn't seem to be enough blood to make the vast difference between life and death. Nagini's poison hadn't worked that fast on Mr. Weasley so Snape had to have bled out. Not that Harry really knew about such things but, for someone who had loomed so large in Harry's mind and life, it really seemed to him that there should be more blood. Shouldn't the room be bathed in it? How could such a mediocre rusty blot on a dirty wooden floor be the only evidence of Snape's death? Be the culmination of the seven years of suspicion, anger, dread and turmoil with which he had infused Harry's life? Mark the deep confusion Harry was feeling right now, trying to reconcile the 'vicious greasy git' that Harry had hated without doubt with the complex and - in many ways - admirable man he had seen in the pensieve, a man for whom he could feel so much sympathy?

Harry remained mesmerized by the static pool of blood and his own maelstrom of thoughts and emotions until Kreacher finally spoke.

"Master is in need of rest. Where does he wish to be doing so?"

Lucius' words echoed in Harry's mind. Yes, it had been a long and terrible day. Harry just wanted to go … the word that formed in his mind was 'home'. But, when he tried to define where that might be, he found no image of any existing place behind that emotional label. His mind finally defaulted to the place that had come the closest to being home for him for the longest period of time.

"Gryffindor Tower."

Harry flattened and flattened, paused, expanded and expanded and found what had once been his Gryffindor dorm bed sitting in front of him. He fell into it and lost consciousness.


	2. Chapter 2

They Call This Winning?

By Abraxisdragon

Beta: Tar Irene

Chapter 2 – Fight or Flight?

(Mid-morning – May 5, 1998)

Harry awakened with an incipient headache, not appreciating in the least the bright sunlight falling through the crack in his bed curtains and directly into his eyes. His mouth tasted fuzzy-foul and, oddly for him, his stomach was rolling and growling with hunger rather than its usual resigned, silent ache. He also quickly discovered that, beneath a light top sheet, he was totally naked.

Vaguely remembering dropping into bed fully clothed, he made a mental note to mention to Kreacher his preference for pants and an undershirt as sleepwear. But finding both the holly and elder wands tucked safely under his pillow and a fresh change of clothing neatly folded on the foot of the bed, he added a compliment to that note as he quietly scoured his mouth magically and dressed within the confines of his curtains.

By this time. the whirling confusion of his thoughts concerning the Malfoys and Snape had returned, made even more confusing by the measure of lucidity a rested body and mind and the bright light of a new day brought to him. Terms like 'assault on an auror … multiple aurors', 'aiding and abetting in escape', 'harboring fugitives' and even 'body-snatching' were floating around with all those noble thoughts his battle-addled mind had dumped on McGonagall. Not particularly ready for any company, and the questioning that would certainly accompany it, before he had some time alone to sort out those thoughts, he peeked through the cracks in the curtains to see who might be there that he would need to quickly evade.

The crack on the side nearest the door revealed an incensed Ron Weasley doing his ineffective utmost to get past an immovable Kreacher, standing like a miniature Rock of Gibraltar in the doorway of the dorm room. Hermione was standing behind and slightly to the left of Ron. From the expression on her face, Harry suspected she was reconsidering her stance on house-elf independence. The scene was rather surreal because, while it was obvious that Ron was in red-faced, yelling-at-maximum-volume mode, the whole thing was being acted out in complete silence.

Surmising that Kreacher must have put a silencing spell around his bed to prevent his being disturbed, Harry waited until Ron finally ran out of steam before flicking his wand to cancel the spell. The first sound he heard was Kreacher's answer to all of Ron's raving.

"I do not care who is wanting to talk to Master. Master has already done enough for the rest of you. Master is needing his sleep. Then Master is needing his breakfast. What you are needing shall wait until after that!"

Ron just waved a copy of the Daily Prophet under the elf's nose and wheezed, out of breath from his tirade. It was Hermione who now spoke.

"Harry would want to know what's happening, Kreacher. He's been sleeping for almost sixty hours. It's getting very bad out there and he needs to do something about it. He needs to apologize to Minister Shacklebolt and Headmistress McGonagall and tell them where he has hidden the Malfoys so that they can be taken in to proper official custody. If this goes on much longer he will have wrecked his whole future and that is a great deal more important than breakfast. Not to mention that sleeping that long isn't normal and Headmistress McGonagall wants him in the infirmary for a check-up right now! I've been working on Madam Pomfrey and she may agree to diagnose post-traumatic stress disorder if he doesn't put it off much longer."

Harry really didn't like the obvious disapproval in her voice aimed at both the protective house-elf and Harry's extended unavailability. He rather agreed with Kreacher's assessment of the situation as opposed to Hermione's. He _had_ done enough and breakfast _was_ at the top of his priorities; definitely far above anything printed in the yellow-rag Daily Prophet. Merlin! He'd had a whole lifetime of short sleep and short rations and his two best friends were begrudging him a peaceful 'almost 60 hours' sleep and breakfast? And what was that posttraumatic shite? Did Hermione think getting him thrown into St. Mungos as a nutter was a good choice?

Therefore, he gave a silent fist-in-the-air in approval when Kreacher snatched the paper out of Ron's grasp, "Nothing is more important than Master's needs. I will give Master this when he is ready to read it. Not before!", and slammed the door in their faces; muttering under his breath something about "bossy, frizzy haired girl", "brainless lout of a boy", "even bossier Headmistress" and "Kreacher is knowing if Master is sick better than stupid medi-witch".

Harry still found the muttering a bit irritating but realized that Kreacher was probably a little too old to give up the habit. At least he seemed to have dropped the terms 'mudblood' and 'blood-traitor' from his vocabulary. Harry stuck his head out of the curtains.

"Thank you, Kreacher. I wasn't ready to talk to them yet. Did you say something about breakfast?"

The elf actually smiled at the affirmation of his actions. It reminded Harry a bit too much of the way Goblins smiled, too many sharp teeth. "Oh yes, Master. I will fetch it immediately." With a muffled 'pop' he was gone.

As Harry fully opened his bed curtains and then spread up the bed, he was confronted with another problem. He needed to use the loo. Also, while he felt fairly clean, probably Kreacher had spelled him so when he put him to bed, he still would have liked a real wash for his hands and face and to finish up cleaning his mouth. The question was how did he get to it without running the risk of someone seeing him and spreading the word that he was up and about?

Deciding that the answer was that he couldn't, he fell back on the lessons of the past year and picked a window facing away from the rest of the castle to piss out of. As he did so, he couldn't help being amused about it. Just one short year ago he would have been absolutely horrified and embarrassed to no end by the idea of doing anything like this. But a year on the run changes a lot of things. After learning to relieve yourself behind any little bit of cover you could find, including just the dark of night, this was nothing. Next, he transfigured a basin from a candlestick, filled it with water from his wand, warmed it and did a water-only splash-over of his face, hands and mouth. After drying off with a hand towel transfigured from a piece of parchment, he vanished the water and returned the parchment and candlestick to their original forms.

Wondering what was taking Kreacher so long, Harry wandered back across the room and picked up the newspaper that he had ignored while making up his bed. The headline was a real grabber.

**IS THE CHOSEN ONE TURNING DARK?**

**Harry Potter Mentally Unstable After Battle?**

**Attacks Aurors?**

**Aids Escape of Known Death Eaters?**

Ooooooh-Kaaay. That certainly hadn't taken long. Maybe Kreacher wasn't as able at obliviation as he claimed. With all the question marks in the headline, Harry decided to actually read the article to see exactly who was saying what.

As it turned out, Harry owed Kreacher an apology for his doubts. "Multiple witnesses confirm rumors … In an outraged outburst in the Great Hall of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Ron Weasley, one of the closest friends of Harry Potter, accused The Chosen One … " etc., etc., etc., made it quite obvious that Harry, not Kreacher, had erred. He should have added one hot-tempered, mouth-in-motion-before-brain-engaged Ron to Kreacher's to-do list.

It then occurred to Harry to wonder just what Ron had been doing ranting in the Great Hall the previous day and again just now in the dorm room doorway? Why wasn't he at home with his family? Had they already buried Fred? Was their grief so short? Or did Ron's hatred of the Malfoys outstrip any feelings he had of duty and commitment to his family during their mourning of his dead brother? The more Harry thought about it, the more he realized that Ron had always found ways to run away from dealing with any painful emotions, usually using anger to do so, and this was just another case of that. He had to wonder just how long Hermione would be satisfied with such shallow behavior if she followed through with their plans to marry. Shaking his head, he turned back to the article in the Prophet.

The only bright spot in the long article, filled with innuendo from every source they could dig up, was a statement from Kingsley Shacklebolt. "Mr. Potter encountered and subdued several men illegally posing as Aurors. These men are now in Ministry custody and will face charges for that as well as for attempted kidnapping and assault and battery on the three individuals they had illegally taken prisoner. Mr. Potter rightfully took said individuals into protective custody." However, the article ended with, "Interim Minister Shacklebolt refused comment on the present location of either the Malfoy family or Harry Potter, leaving this reporter in great doubt as to the true intentions of The Chosen One. We cannot refrain from questioning if the Ministry is again refusing to face facts as was the case when He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named returned."

Page two was dedicated to a lurid article describing Lucius' and Draco's crimes, both proven and rumored; strictly rumored in Draco's case since he had never been officially charged with, much less convicted of, anything. Narcissa wasn't mentioned; leading Harry to think that no one could be dug up that could, or would, accuse her of anything other than being a dutiful wife and mother. The wizarding world was still backward enough when it came to women's rights, especially married women's rights vs. their husbands', that Harry could understand that attitude, maybe agree with it in Narcissa's case.

Page three was a rehash of every 'aberrant' episode involving Harry since he had entered Hogwarts, accompanied by an editorial demanding that Harry be immediately imprisoned to prevent his rise as the next Dark Lord. In opposition, page four – well, at least the half of it above the advertisements - lauded all his "brave actions against evil" and ended in another editorial that demanded that he be appointed Minister of Magic for Life. It was a bit of a pisser that both pages used most of the same incidents to prove their opposite points of view.

In any case, The Prophet was certainly hedging its bets for whichever way the ax fell even if the order of the pieces - from front to back of the paper - and the space given to the respective possibilities offered did seem to show a blatant preference for the 'mad-possibly-going-dark' theory.

Pages five, six and seven were filled with editorials demanding Ministry action on various petitions. Most were either harmless silliness or fairly good ideas for bettering the Ministry system of government and justice. However, there were three that set Harry's blood at a boil.

The first was a demand for the total extermination of all giants, werewolves, dementors, thestrals, etc., etc., etc., and any other creature termed dark – including any wizards tainted with any heritage from such dark blood. Merfolk and centaurs were on the list. Even veelas were mentioned as possibly related to harpies, something totally untrue in every aspect. In other words, the pureblood agenda was still being pushed to its limits. Only goblins and house-elves were ignored, both obviously too useful to the pureblood way of life to be mucked with.

The dementors Harry couldn't argue with, but any other dark creatures Voldemort had used were nothing but poor dumb animals that needed containment and protection, not extermination. Many creatures listed were not actually dark but only uncomfortable for most wizards to be around, like thestrals, and/or hadn't even been involved in the battle either for or against Voldemort.

The other intelligent magical creatures were a completely different matter, and the question of giants and werewolves was a very personal one for Harry. Did no one care that Hagrid and Grawp had fought on the side of Light? That only a few giants had been lured out of their mountains by Voldemort's promises? That if the wizarding world had just left them alone they wouldn't have been involved at all?

Did anyone care that Remus had died fighting Voldemort? That the majority of werewolves were suffering their persecution in the same sad resignation as Remus or self-imposed isolation from wizards and muggles alike, and no other known to be anything close to the rabid monster that Greyback had been? That the answer for them was getting rid of the discriminatory laws and providing decent education and employment and affordable, quality brewed wolfsbane potion? Bugger it! The battle hadn't been fought during a full moon. Who could know how many werewolves fought on either side?

The second wrath producing petition, that had to have been instigated by a muggleborn, was a demand to confiscate all property of known Death Eaters and anyone related to a known Death Eater and to tax all purebloods to pay for war damages to muggleborns and muggles.

First off, more purebloods, like the Weasleys and Longbottoms and McGonagall, had been fighting for the Light than for Voldemort. Second, how could anyone be held responsible for the actions of everyone they were related to? Harry's blood tie to Dudley, Harry-Hunter and all round bully/juvenile delinquent, came to mind on that one. Finally, just about all of the wizarding world, other than muggle-borns, were related somehow to everyone else. If you confiscated everyone's property, what did that leave you to tax?

But the pureblood side of it wasn't any more sensible. The third petition that angered Harry was a demand to tax all muggle-borns and half-bloods for war damages, claiming that they were responsible for bringing H-W-M-N-B-N's wrath down on the wizarding world. Bloody hell! Harry could see himself and every member of the order being penalized for the same reason, regardless of blood status.

It seemed that the schism in the wizarding world that Voldemort had so successfully manipulated was still sickeningly prevalent and the cowardly cretins who hadn't had the courage to fight on either side in the war were crawling out of their holes like rabid cockroaches to feed on the survivors. The last straw on top of all that garbage was that the bloody gits still couldn't find the courage to use Voldemort's name when the arsehole was dead; really, truly, finally, completely, body-in-the-morgue dead; damn it all!

Harry slammed the newspaper to the floor, barely restraining himself from setting it afire, just as Kreacher returned. However, rather than a good breakfast to sooth his temper, the elf brought only more aggravation.

"Master, I am not able to get your breakfast. I am abjectly humiliated for my failure but the stupid Hogwarts house elves will not allow it until you have spoken with the bossy Headmistress. They say she has ordered it so."

Harry placed a comforting hand on Kreacher's shoulder to make sure that the elf didn't take his obvious anger personally. "That doesn't sound like Professor McGonagall. Are you sure that's what they said?"

"Oh yes, Master."

In proof of the elf's truthfulness, almost immediately there was a loud pounding on the dorm room door and, after a slight pause and what sounded like a muffled disagreement, McGonagall's voice sounding clearly through the thick wood.

"Mr. Potter! Open this door immediately!"

Ingrained habit had Harry moving toward the door to comply. His already aroused temper stopped him in his tracks before he reached it. Yes, a year on the run had definitely changed things. He was no longer a pliant schoolboy willing to be ordered about and forced into things he didn't want to do. Besides, McGonagall's method of coercion, withholding his breakfast, smacked a little too much of his life with the Dursleys for Harry to accept it.

"I'm not dressed, Professor, and I'd like to have some breakfast and a wash-up. I'll come to your office as soon as I'm really awake."

There was the sound of shuffling and more disagreement outside the door and then the pounding on the door started again, with even more violence. A rough, angry male voice called through it. "This is Willis Leland, Personal Assistant to the Minister of Magic. Get out here now, boy!"

That word! A second reminder of life with the Dursleys completely finished it for Harry. He had just destroyed a bloody dark lord for them and they still called him 'boy'! His first inclination was to blast the door into splinters and the hell with anyone who was behind it but he still had too much respect and, yes, affection for McGonagall to put her at risk. Hurrying to put on his socks and shoes and cast a packing spell on his belongings, he stalled.

"I'm not dressed." Then in a whisper to Kreacher, "Get us out of here!"

The elf looked positively wretched. "I am not able to, Master. Too many of the wards have been rebuilt. Kreacher is not sure it would be safe for a wizard to pass through even by elf magic."

Quickly shrinking and pocketing his belongings, including his old school trunk, which Kreacher must have fetched out of storage for him, Harry looked around for a way out. Providence provided. One of the school's outmoded but serviceable Comet brooms was leaning in the niche where Neville had always slept. Harry grabbed the broom, crossed to the largest of the tower room windows and opened it wide. Perching on the ledge with the broom between his legs, he commanded Kreacher to get on behind him.

Kreacher's eyes widened in fear but the resounding crack of the heavy wooden door beginning to splinter put an end to any idea of protest the elf might have had. He reached the assigned perch in one gigantic leap, wrapping his stick thin arms around Harry's waist in a death grip as the inertia of his landing pitched them off the ledge into thin air. Kreacher's normally gravelly voice turned into a high-soprano shriek that echoed off of the castle walls as Harry allowed them to freefall for almost half the height of the tower before streaking off at the broom's top speed toward the boundaries of the wards.

While not a full Wronski Feint, it had still been an 'iffy' maneuver for such an old broom but Harry trusted his ability to fly no matter what equipment he employed and it gave him a feeling of control to push his limits at it. Now if he could figure out what to do to get the same control over the stupid mess he had made of his life.

OOOOOOOOOO

Once he reached the ward boundaries, Harry could think of nothing to do but continue flying while he took the time to decide on a more definite destination than 'anywhere but here'. He would, of course, have to return and deal with Kingsley. After all, the man seemed to be doing his best to justify Harry's actions as both legal and rational. Yet, Harry couldn't keep himself from questioning the motives for that. The image of a controlled, rational Chosen One was just as much in the best interests of the Ministry … unless they could report that they had the uncontrolled, mentally unstable one locked up in St. Mungos or a cell in Azkaban, of course. Harry had always liked Shacklebolt but, considering the heretofore unknown Mr. Leland's attitude and actions, Harry had to think that the latter was a serious possibility.

It was all too political and Harry simply wasn't a political animal. It quickly became apparent to him that he needed help from someone who was. But, it had to be someone he could trust not to automatically take the Ministry's side of things. Only one person came to mind; one person who had as much to lose as Harry did if everything went up the chimney; Lucius Malfoy. Harry slowed the broom to a hover and turned to Kreacher.

"Can you take us to Malfoy manor now?"

The little elf was still wide-eyed with fear, a truly remarkable look for someone as droopy-eyed as Kreacher, but managed to answer with several quick, jerky nods of his head before snapping his fingers. After what seemed to be a somewhat longer pause than Harry remembered experiencing before when transported by the elf, if one mini-millisecond could be longer than another, he found himself and Kreacher still astride his broom, still hovering in the air, having traveled nowhere.

"What's wrong, Kreacher?"

"The manor is not there anymore, Master."

"Then take us to Lucius Malfoy."

The elf closed his eyes for a brief moment then opened them and replied. "I cannot find him. I cannot find Mistress Narcissa or Master Draco, either. I am sorry, Master. They have hidden themselves the same way my Mistress' home was hidden before."

Realizing that Lucius must have activated a Fidelius Charm, Harry waited for shock, anger, betrayal … any strong emotion to surface but was only mildly surprised when nothing did. All those emotions were in use; being applied to Shacklebolt, McGonagall, Ron and Hermione … people he had thought of as friends and allies, people he had been led to expect better from. He found nothing but resigned irritation for Lucius Malfoy behaving like a self-centered, back-stabbing prick; just the same as the man had always behaved.

Like the flick of a switch, Harry reverted to 'war mode' once again. Almost unconsciously, he used the hopefully untraceable elder wand to disillusion himself, Kreacher and his broom while his mind turned to the problem of a safe place to locate and regroup. He immediately dismissed anywhere in the muggle world since any magic he preformed would be all too obvious. After several minutes of wracking his brain, like the preverbal light bulb flashing on, he thought of the cave that Sirius had used during Harry's third and fourth Years. While it had seemed a foolish choice to him then, he could now see the advantages of it.

It's location on the edge of the Forbidden Forest and the proximity of Hogsmeade and Hogwarts would lessen the chance of any use of magic receiving special notice by the Ministry and easy access to Hogsmeade would give him ways to stay aware of what the Ministry was doing and the reaction of the wizarding population to it and him. In fact it was even more prefect for him than it had been for Sirius. Sirius, with Harry thought to be his target, had been expected to be staying close to Hogwarts, at least in third year. In Harry's case, they would more likely to think he was running away from it and anywhere close would be the last place they would think of looking for him.

Not sure of exactly where his headlong flight had taken him, Harry did a point-me to locate the direction of Hogwarts and then leisurely flew in that direction, watching carefully for any oncoming pursuit, until he spotted enough familiar landmarks to head directly for the cave. After checking and finding it unoccupied by any creatures, he entered it. Finding that it hadn't changed in the three years since he, Ron and Hermione had visited Sirius there, even the pile of leaves and grasses that the man had used for a bed still dry and relatively comfortable, he enlarged his belongings and began to set up house.

"Master is going to live _here_?"

Harry didn't have the energy to be anything but slightly irritated at the elf's disgusted grumble.

"It's the best we can do for now and a lot better than a Ministry cell. Feel free to do anything you can think of to make it better."

The elf gave him a superior smirk and popped away.

While Harry thought that he probably should be worried that the elf might do something that would betray them to the Ministry or, more likely, McGonagall, he was just relieved that he would be rid of him for a while. As much as he had come to understand Kreacher's loyalty to his Master Regulus and the fact that it was mostly Sirius' fault - his ill treatment of the elf - that Kreacher had felt no loyalty toward Sirius, Harry still wasn't truly comfortable around him because of his betrayal of Sirius. Kreacher seemed to have given Harry his loyalty for destroying Regulus' murderer but the old elf was a hell of a lot more complicated, judgmental and set in old-line, pureblood thinking than the sweet, wide-eyed Dobby and Harry was fairly sure he would never come to completely trust Kreacher to remain loyal to a Master with a muggle-born mother. He was rather stuck with the elf at the moment, but decided that both he and Kreacher would probably be a lot happier if he transferred him to Narcissa's ownership as soon as possible; that is if he was ever able to locate the lady in question again.

But Harry's reprieve from the elf's company turned out to be a short one. He had barely begun to arrange the cave when Kreacher reappeared, a very large, antique trunk in tow.

"Master is a powerful wizard and must not be living like an animal. Kreacher has brought him Master Regulus' traveling trunk from Mistress' home."

Harry wanted to bang his head again the cave wall. "You went to Grimmauld Place? Did anyone see you?"

Kreacher glowered. "Mistress does not tolerate stupid elves. Of course Kreacher did not allow himself to be seen. Now, Kreacher will put the trunk in the back of the cave where it cannot be seen from the entrance and will show Master how to use it, how to live as a proper wizard should while traveling."

Harry felt like a First Year being called down in class by a disgruntled McGonagall as the elf scuttled past him towing the trunk. Merlin! Even his house-elf was still treating him like a child! What was wrong with this picture? With a resigned shake of his head, he turned and followed Kreacher further into the cave.

OOOOOOOOO

Though looking very much like regular school trunk, but half again longer, taller and wider, the travel trunk was a marvel of wizarding space; a mix between Moody's many compartmented trunk and the tent that Mr. Weasley had borrowed for the Quidditch World Cup.

It had one very obvious lock in the very center of the front panel of the trunk and six more hidden within a metal decoration in the middle of the top of the trunk, one in the center and five more at each point of the pentagram shaped design surrounding it. Kreacher produced a ring of keys and took great pleasure in lecturing Harry while demonstrating their uses. The front panel lock opened the top of a trunk quite as normal as Harry's school trunk. The locks on the top were where the magic happened.

The trunk had to be set on its left end to use the keys for the top locks. With the insertion of a key, the trunk elongated upward and the top, now front, morphed into a common, though ornately carved, house door that the key then opened. The center lock revealed a house bigger than 4 Privet Drive. The ground floor consisted of a sitting room, a dining room, a library, a hall with a guest loo, and a kitchen with pantry. The first floor had four bedrooms with a full bath attached to each. Finally, there was a full cellar with a well-designed potions laboratory plus three very large storerooms/workrooms.

It was furnished with heavy antiques and thick tapestry or leather upholstery. The color scheme was dark wood and various shades of blues, wine reds and creams. It was a bit heavy on the Slytherin snake motif but was bright and spacious with a definitely relaxed and masculine aura and none of the grim formality, Slytherin green and dark malaise that had permeated Grimmauld Place. Harry was surprised to find that he felt quite comfortable with all of it immediately.

Herding Harry back to the 'front door', Kreacher demonstrated that the locks circling the center one opened doors to various individual rooms that one might want to quickly access without slogging through the rest of the house; say, if a host's accommodations were not up to one's standards but one didn't want to be obvious about it. Harry took more time to catalogue these spaces than he had while exploring the whole of the house.

First, north of center, was the library that, according to Kreacher, had stretched to accommodate the entirety of the Grimmauld Place library in addition to what Regulus had already placed there. The elf was gleeful that he had made off with every book belonging to the Noble House of Black right under the noses of the several Aurors keeping watch both inside and outside of the residence; quite a few of which Harry recognized as being deemed completely dark by Molly Weasley and Mad-Eye Moody and supposedly destroyed.

Then, moving clockwise, came the cellar potions lab. It was fully stocked with equipment but would need its ingredients stores checked and restocked. Next came the kitchen and food larder with hot and cold boxes, a large stasis pantry, wine and liquor storage and lots of shelving and cabinets for utensils and staples storage. Again all the equipment was there but the food stores would need refurbishing. The wine and liquor storage, however, was fully stocked with bottles whose dates set them as well-aged long before Regulus had stocked them.

"Master Regulus had excellent taste.", was Kreacher's comment as he eyed Harry with grave doubt that his new Master possessed the same written all over his wrinkled face.

The fourth lock in the outer circle was the very lavish master loo with a four-person tub with a large assortment of additive taps, towel warming bars, robe hooks and an ample, well-stocked linen closet.

Last, but not least, was the walk-in wardrobe of the master suite with a mirrored dresser and stool, shoe racks under the hanging poles, a large block of normal looking chests of drawers and a tall chest of drawers with both very deep and very shallow drawers that had small thumbprint sized, flat medallions in place of the knobs and hand-pulls the others had.

"Master must give the valuables chest his blood. Then it will open to no one but him."

Harry saw that the elf was pointing to a vicious looking cobra's head at the center of the chest's carved top molding. As Harry stared at the snakehead, he voiced his doubt of this procedure aloud.

"And what if it decidesssss to poissssson me inssssstead?"

To Harry's shock the snake answered back.

"My Massssster Regulussss has been dead many yearsssss. I would like a new masssster. A masssster who issss a SSSSSSpeaker would be very pleasssssing. Only my firsssst Masssster wassss a SSSSSpeaker, none sssssince."

Shite! Bloody shite! Albus had said that the Parseltongue came from Voldemort! So shouldn't Harry have lost it when that part of him died? Harry quickly pushed the Parseltongue question aside. He was damned sure that Voldemort was dead and why he could still speak it was something he couldn't do anything about right now anyway. Instead, he turned away from the snakehead and the troubling question it represented and took a closer look at the clothing occupying the hanging poles and chests of drawers.

The first thing that he noticed was that he and Sirius' younger brother were of a similar size and build, shorter and slighter than Sirius; not a perfect match but a lot closer than any of the other hand-me-downs Harry had worn. Even the shoes looked like they might fit him if he wore an extra pair of socks or two. The clothing was definitely out of date, but that hardly made a difference in the wizarding world where everyone seemed eclectic compared to muggles. For the most part, the clothing looked comfortable, more daily-wear than fancy dress, even if a lot more complicated than modern muggle clothing. Like the house, Regulus' wardrobe ran heavy with shades of blue and wine red, and a smattering of creams; with black and various shades of acceptable green and brown to round it out. True, the materials all looked fairly rich to Harry; including shoes, boots, belts, vests and cloaks, in both brown and black, that had to be dragon hide; but there were no gemstone buttons, fancy braid or other too 'toff' embellishments.

All in all, Regulus' choice in clothing was equally appealing to Harry as his house décor had been. Certainly more appealing than the clothing his year on the run had left him with, most of which had been Weasley hand-me-downs in the first place; a world better than Dudley's but still well used and on the large side. Fugitives didn't get much chance to do any frivolous shopping.

Harry had never been that interested in clothing. At Hogwarts it was all school robes and uniforms and he was comfortable around the Weasleys in anything. The Weasleys were comfortable people to be around. But he knew that the way he was forced to dress at 4 Privet Drive had definitely marked him as an outcast and brought a lot of suspicious attention from the neighbors. Regulus' clothing wouldn't do that in the wizarding world and would even pass for acceptably eccentric - translate that 'got money' eccentric - with muggles.

Since he didn't think that Kreacher would have left the clothing here if he had any objections to Harry using it, he requested the elf to pick out something for a comfortable day at home. Then Harry faced the problematic 'valuables' chest and, in a leap of faith, offered his hand to the carved cobra head. The snake lightly scraped its fangs across the back of it, leaving two hardly noticeable scratches that bled little and healed quickly.

"Now all my drawersssss will open only to your touch, Massssster. SSSSSince you are a SSSSSpeaker, I will alsssso be able to tell you where thingssss you wissssh to usssse are located."

Harry would have left the examination of the chest's contents until later but Kreacher was adamant that he take at least a cursory inventory of it immediately.

Merlin in ruffled red pants! The thing was chocked full from top to bottom with golden galleons, silver sickles, gold and silver knickknacks, dishes, and small furnishings and plain and jeweled gold and silver jewelry and an amazing variety of loose jewels! Most of the drawers seemed to be wizarding spaces within a wizarding space that held a bloody fortune. Harry turned and confronted Kreacher.

"Did Regulus put all this here?"

"Only a little of it, Master. For traveling, Master Regulus said. But Master Regulus never had the chance to use it." Then the elf seemed to shiver as if to shake off the misery of the memories of his lost Master. "My Mistress put the greatest part of it here to hide it from Master Sirius, he being the only remaining heir. Kreacher added other things to it today; family heirlooms and anything of value still lying about. Kreacher can also retrieve the things stolen by dirty thief Mundungus if Master orders it. Now, if you will model the clothes Kreacher has chosen for you, Kreacher will make them fit correctly. Then Kreacher will adjust everything to fit you as a proper wizard's clothing should."

Harry got the feeling he was going to start to hear the words 'proper wizard' in his sleep before long.

After dressing in the elf's choices and receiving a 'proper' tailoring, Harry checked himself out in the full-length mirror. He liked what he saw. The only things that ruined the effect were his always-messy hair, his lightening bolt scar and his ugly glasses. Two of the three he knew could be corrected. He used a spell to lengthen his hair other than his fringe to approximately the same length as Lucius Malfoy's, let the aggravating elf say that wasn't proper, and tied it back at the nape of his neck with a plain silver clip the cobra located for him.

While juggling the positives and negatives of contact lenses versus a muggle surgery he had heard about, the thought of Kreacher's healing abilities surfaced. A few questions and another leap of faith later, Harry stuffed his now unnecessary glasses into one of the drawers of the chest.

Then, since his scar hadn't felt like anything but a normal scar since his near-death and the actual death of that part of Voldemort's soul, he turned to Kreacher once more to see if his third, and most identifying, problem could be solved by the elf as well; if the curse part of it was really gone and it would allow itself to be erased now. Voila! A clear, smooth forehead; which made Harry feel a lot better about still being a Parselmouth. He lengthened his fringe to match the rest and adjusted the clip to catch it all back.

Looking at his new image was a revelation. The lack of fringe revealed a high forehead more like his mother's than his father's. This, along with the smoother lay of his tied back hair and the absence of the thick black frames of his glasses, made his face seem thinner and longer, more oval or rectangular, and his cheek bones higher. The lack of the round, thick lenses allowed his eyes to be seen as larger and more elliptical rather than owl-round. The well tailored, more form-fitting clothing showed off his slim, well-muscled body and, along with the heeled boots, made him look taller than he had in over-sized castoffs and trainers. It also made him look older, an adult; when he hadn't seemed even his actual 'almost eighteen' before.

Using a coloring charm that Hermione had used whenever they needed to be out and about in the daytime, Harry added heavy auburn highlights to his hair. He liked the result. It was still basically black but it reminded him a little more of his mother's hair. He liked the thought of looking even more like her than he already did so he used the charm again to highlight it a bit more and then fixed it into a permanent change that couldn't be reversed, only re-colored. Then he did the same with the lengthening charm. With that final change and the obvious lack of the tell-tail scar, he was fairly certain that, once away from anyone who really knew him or his parents, he probably wouldn't be recognized.

But the rare, avada kedavra color of his eyes was still a dead giveaway to anyone who did know him; possibly even to many who had seen him in the myriad of color photographs the Prophet and Witch Weekly had published too damn often. He knew he should see if Kreacher could do something about that, too, but couldn't bring himself to take the risk that any change might not be reversible, that he might lose that tie to his mother. Finally he decided that he would just have to make do with the changes he had already made until he could get some muggle non-prescription contacts to deal with the eye color. Shite! He was going to have to figure out a way to change some of his newly gained wealth into muggle currency.

As his stomach once again announced its displeasure with a rather strong grumbling twist of hunger, Harry became angry with McGonagall, Shacklebolt, Ron and Hermione all over again. Damn, them! The war was over. He shouldn't be forced to live this way again!

Transfiguring a moneybag from a handkerchief, he dug into a drawer of galleons, put four handfuls into the bag and gave it to Kreacher. "Get us some food. As far away from here as possible and not too much from any one place."

As the elf popped away, Harry sank to the floor of the closet with his back against the valuables chest and, with a distressed sigh, dropped his head into his hands.

It shouldn't have to be this way. He shouldn't be on the run again. And, not to be ungrateful to Kreacher, the wondrous trunk and all the money in it were pitiful compared to the dinky tent and almost non-existent funds he had shared with Ron and Hermione during the past year because there was no way in hell either Ron or Hermione would be willing to take his side in this and be here with him. Bloody hell! He'd really fucked himself up this time!

But as much of a fool as his logical mind told him he had been to trust Lucius 'Bloody Death Eater' Malfoy, Harry's heart still told him that, by honoring his life-debt to Narcissa so totally, he had done what was right rather than what was easy.


	3. Chapter 3

They Call This Winning?

By Abraxisdragon

Beta: Tar Irene

Chapter 3 – To Be or Not to Be … … What?

(Afternoon – May 5, 1998)

It wasn't long before a grumbling Kreacher had returned, evicted Harry from the closet and had him sitting in the dinning room, where a 'proper wizard' should take his meals. Harry found himself faced with a choice of six entrees; six salads; twelve vegetable side dishes; six puddings; pitchers of orange juice, tomato juice, and milk; urns of coffee, tea, and hot chocolate; and three six-packs of Coke in the can. Considering his Master's hunger an immediacy, the elf had chosen to skip the grocers and had rather outdone himself 'shopping' at some muggle restaurant kitchens, much easier targets than wizarding ones, but was muttering to himself about "stocking his kitchen" and "cooking Master _proper wizards' food_". Looking at the array of food in front of him, Harry had a funny, funny but disturbing, image of Kreacher turning into a one-elf crime wave. After thinking for a moment, he called the elf back to him.

"Kreacher, wait until I have finished eating before you go out again. I need to talk to you about a few things." Then, after he had satisfied his hunger, feeling a great deal more positive about things because of it, and Kreacher had put the abundant leftovers in stasis, he called the elf to him and continued, "Kreacher, first, we need to pay for things even if we get them from muggles. I know the Blacks didn't think that way but I do. I have no idea how things are done in the wizarding world, how much house-elves can do without it being suspicious. I guess groceries are alright but what about exchanging wizarding money for muggle money?"

"No, Master. The goblins do not allow unaccompanied house-elves access to Gringotts. They do not like us … … except as food." That thought, of eating anything that could talk to you, sent a shudder through Harry, though it seemed to be just a fact of life to Kreacher. "You will need to use a post owl, Master. Kreacher can buy an owl for Master but cannot guarantee as good a bonding as Master might find for himself, sufficient for a household owl but not a familiar."

The image of beautiful, loyal Hedwig appeared before Harry and the thought of bonding with another owl just seemed impossible.

"A household owl will be fine. Get one that's really plain, doesn't stand out; one that looks like any old post owl."

"Yes, Master. One that will be in no way memorable, not easily identifiable as belonging to Master?"

"Yes, that's right." 'And not the least bit like Hedwig.' Harry thought as he continued, "What about potions ingredients?"

"Of course, Master. _Proper wizards_ always send house-elves to do such menial shopping. Unless the ingredients are very expensive or special."

Harry ignored the continuing dig.

"No, nothing special. Standard students' kits for all seven years would probably do for now."

"Yes, Master. Standard ingredient selections are also available for potions for household maintenance, bodily care and healing and packaged assortments of prepared potions for those as well."

"Good. Get one of everything, ingredient kits and potions, but not more than two or three at any one shop. Get as much out of the money chest as you'll need."

"Now that Master has bonded with it, Kreacher cannot do that. Master will need to give Kreacher the money."

Well, that would certainly be a pain in the arse to have to be handing out funds every time Kreacher needed to go shopping. "Can't I tell it to let you get into it?"

"Proper wizards do not …"

Harry had had enough of the 'proper wizards' shite. "I don't give a damn what proper wizards do or don't do. If you are going to be responsible for stocking the house, you should be able to get to the money you need to do it. What good is a valuables chest if the household budget money has to be kept in a kitchen drawer? Come on. We are going to talk to a snake."

As it turned out, much to Kreacher's surprise, the cobra had no problem accepting Harry's order to allow a house-elf access to its money drawers, requiring only a 'taste' of Kreacher's skin with its tongue rather than the blood it had taken from Harry and a designation from Harry as to what drawers Kreacher should have access to. Kreacher tried very hard but couldn't hide his shock when Harry lifted him to the cobra and answered the snake, "All of them." Once the still confused elf was lowered back to the floor, loaded down with a more ample supply of Galleons, ordered to buy kitchen and potions supplies and anything else he thought necessary for the house and on his way, Harry questioned the cobra about its willingness to accept the elf. Its answer was an education in perspective as concerned prejudice, and also in the nature of the carved snake.

It wasn't a matter of lack of prejudice, only a difference in prejudice. It seemed that the spirit of an actual living snake had been used to animate the carving and it lumped all two-legged creatures into the same category: namely creatures who had faulty senses of sight, smell, hearing and intelligence and were just as likely to step on you and/or try to kill you as not, who therefore, were best avoided whenever possible. The only exceptions to this dim view were Speakers. Kreacher was no different to the snake than all the wizards who had owned or been given access to the chest since he had been imprisoned in it, who differed from other two-legs only in that the snake must allow them entry into the chest rather than poisoning them. Only his first master and now Harry were truly different.

"You ssssound lonely."

The snake was silent for a time before replying. "Yesssss, … lonely for a long time." Then, after another long pause, "I wassss my firsssst Masssster'ssss familiar. He captured my sssspirit when my body died and put it in thissss chesssst. I wassss happy to be able to sssstay with him, to continue to sssserve him. He promissssed to take me with him when he died, but he died by ssssurprisssse, sssslain by an enemy, and I wassss left behind." After another pause, "At firsssst, sssserving new Massssterssss wassss not a bad thing but after a long time without a Masssster that I could ssssspeak to, could be more than a piecccce of furniture to, it became a bad thing. … … I began to think about ussssing my poisssson on a masssster … that maybe then they would desssstroy the chesssst and I would be free … but I could never be ssssure that I would not be desssstroyed with it. Alsssso, I forget thosssse thoughtssss when a masssster approachessss me."

A cold chill ran down Harry's back. "Even when you get a new masssster?"

"Yessss. If my old masssster is dead or he tellssss me they are ssssuppossssssssed to be my new masssster, I forget about wanting to poisssson them. … But you are not of the blood of my lasssst Masssster and no one of hissss blood told me you would be my new masssster. I could have poissssoned you insssstead of bonding with you. I didn't becausssse I wanted to belong to a SSSSpeaker again."

"But you can sssstill think about poissssoning me?"

"Yesss, but ssssince the bonding I cannot want to poisssson you when you are with me. But you are a SSSSpeaker. If you remember to talk to me ssssometimessss, I will not be sssso lonely that I would want to poisssson you. Maybe you could move me out of thissss dark closssset to a room you are often in. Or, perhapssss, a room where I could lissssten to other people and tell you what they ssssay when you are not with them. I did that for my firsssst Masssster. It would be nice to sssspy like that again, to have ssssomething interessssting to do again."

"Cobrassss can undersssstand human sssspeach?"

"I don't know about all cobrassss but I couldn't from the nesssst. My firsssst Masssster gave me that talent when I became hissss familiar. I wassss hissss sssspy from our firsssst dayssss together. I wassss glad to sssstill be able to do that after I losssst my living body and could no longer move around."

"Then you could have helped all your massssters find thingssss in the chesssst."

"No. I could undersssstand them but they couldn't undersssstand me. It wassss very frusssstrating when they would become angry about losssssing ssssomething and talk much too loudly and sssstart jerking and sssslamming my drawerssss."

They sat in silence for a while as Harry thought over everything he had learned about the cobra. It was scary to think that only his talent as a Parselmouth had saved him from, at the least, a very nasty bite or quite possibly death by cobra venom. However, he couldn't blame the snake. It was obvious the poor creature had been played foul by his original master. The man surely wouldn't have put the spirit under such a heavy blood/ownership onus if he had ever intended to free it. Harry had to feel sorry for it. Even with the long hours, days, he had spent isolated in his cupboard, he couldn't imagine the extent of what the snake spirit had suffered over its extremely long existence as the protector of the chest.

But what to do about it? The only answer was to find a way to free it. Until then, he would have to make sure he made life as pleasant as possible for it.

"Do you have a name?"

"Firsssst Masssster called me SSSSlange."

"Well, SSSSlange, I have work to do in the knowledge room. Would you care to join me?"

"It would be a pleassssure, Masssster."

OOOOOOOOOO

Taking the large chest through the house from the first floor bedroom closet to the ground floor library would be a real pain. Not knowing how to access the individual entry door from the inside of a room once it had been closed and disappeared into a seemingly unbroken wall, Harry left the house by the main door, closed it and opened the outer door to the closet. He then levitated the chest out of the closet into the cave, closed the closet door, opened the outer door to the library and levitated the chest into that room. Once he had made a space for it on the wall closest to the desk, he began a quest for spells to protect himself, Kreacher, the trunk and what ever owl Kreacher found from tracking and location spells … and any other dangers he might think off or discover as he progressed in his search.

The truth be told, he was more than a little peeved at himself for having always depended too much on Hermione for this kind of thing and now having only vague ideas about how to detect such things and counter them, or setting up the protections against them in the first place. However, as he carried on a continuing conversation with Slange about what he was doing, that he thought of as wholly for the snake's benefit, Harry discovered that he was gaining a great deal from it as well. The snake was very knowledgeable about the necessity of such precautions and a variety of nasty tricks that one might expect one's enemies to attempt and the nasty tricks that could be used to counter them. With this unexpected help, Harry had a very productive afternoon of research.

Yes, very productive research but not so good otherwise. Harry had several rolls of parchment filled with copies of detection, countering and prevention spells, as well as the retaliation spells that Slange seemed so fond of, but had made almost no progress in using them and was frustratingly aware of just why he, and Ron, had depended so much on Hermione. They were 'demonstration learners' and she was the 'book learner'. All he had managed to figure out on his own was how to detect and remove tracking spells; finding that the Ministry tracking spell on his holly wand had indeed deactivated on his seventeenth birthday and removing the residual traces of it and reassuring himself that the elder wand was as clean of such spells as he had thought it was. This had taken him numerous attempts when he knew he could have picked up the wand movements in seconds if he had had someone that could make sense out of the static diagrams to demonstrate them for him.

"Why do wizzzzardssss make flat picturessss of wand movementssss with all those confussssing arrowssss when they can make photographssss that can wave at you?"

"Perhapssss you sssshould look for the sssspell that animatessss drawingssss, Masssster. I know my firssst Masssster could do that."

Harry banged his head against the desktop several times and then followed Slange's advice, pulling out several books on wizarding art techniques. He found what he needed in the table of contents of the second book he checked. However, it wasn't a spell. It was a potion. Oh, joy … not. Taking a list of the ingredients to the basement lab, he discovered that Kreacher had finished stocking it and all the ingredients were available except for one that Harry couldn't remember even hearing the name of before, occamy tears. Shite!

Returning to the library via the kitchen, he grabbed one of the leftover entrees and a side dish of mixed vegetables out of the stasis pantry, heated both, grabbed a cold can of Coke and settled back at his desk to eat and to continue looking for the spell Slange assured him did exist, resigned to the fact that if he didn't find it by the time Kreacher returned from his latest errands, he would have to try and get some occamy tears and attempt the potion. Oh, double joy … double not!

As it turned out, Harry had barely reinitiated his search for the image animation spell when he found it. Joyful at having escaped the need for potion brewing, he quickly mastered it and then the necessary wand movements for everything on his list of detection and protection spells. He soon had himself, the trunk house and, since he would want to take it with him when he moved out of the trunk, the valuables chest protected in every way possible short of a Fidelius. Kreacher and the nondescript brown owl he had purchased were similarly treated as soon as the elf returned. The owl was then immediately sent off to Gringotts with a large bag of galleons and a request for exchange into muggle currency.

All his immediate needs taken care of, Harry's now idle mind turned to his 'Great Problem': the Ministry, the Wizengamot and the missing Malfoys.

OOOOOOOOO

Expecting a rushing return of the confused - right panicked - state of mind that precipitated his adrenaline fueled, instinctual flight from Hogwarts, Harry was extremely surprised to find himself calm and rather contented instead. At first he attributed this to the fact that he was well-fed, comfortably housed and suddenly quite filthy rich rather than sitting on the cold hard floor of a dark drafty cave with an adrenaline hangover, a painfully empty belly and poor as a church mouse. However, it didn't take long for him to realize that his contentment wasn't just a shallow matter of creature comfort; that somewhere, deep inside, a part of him was supremely satisfied with this abrupt and quite possibly permanent separation from everything and everyone in his life. As he tried to be shocked by this, that small, bitchy inner voice that all humans possess began to have its say.

"What life? The one where everyone thinks they own a piece of you, of the 'Boy-Who-Lived', of the 'Chosen One'? The one where everyone thinks they have the right to tell you what you are; what you should be; how you should live; how you should think? The one where you killed their big, bad dark lord for them and they still treat you like a child? Or would that be the life where they think you should be locked up like a dangerous animal because you stood up to Voldemort when they haven't the courage to say his name?"

"But that's my life."

"_So was Privet Drive. You want to go back there, too?"_

"No! But I don't want to give up my magic!"

"_So. Britain isn't the only place wizards live, now is it?"_

"What about the Malfoys? I took responsibility for them. Don't I have to do something about Lucius?"

"_No you don't. Destiny made Voldemort your problem not Lucius Malfoy. You had a life-debt to Narcissa and he came along for the ride, end of story. Forget the Malfoys, this is about you."_

"But what about Ron and Hermione … and Ginny?"

"_Well, let's see what we have there. First, the 'friend' who told everybody in the Great Hall, i.e. the whole wizarding world, how wrong he thought what you had done was and will hold a grudge about it and act the stubborn git about it for months and months and maybe more; as he has done before, over and over and over again? Second, the 'friend' who will nag you to misery if you don't do what she thinks you ought to about every little thing; never understanding that what she thinks is right for her is not what might be right for everyone else; like going back to being a student and pretending everything is normal again when the rest of the wizarding world isn't going to let it be normal for you … ever? Third, the girlfriend that meant so much to you, that you thought knew you so well, that you passed her by and sat and talked with Luna Lovegood after the final battle because you knew Luna would be more apt to say what you needed to hear said; the girlfriend you thought something to eat and a good night's sleep was more important than seeing when you left Dumbledore's office; the girlfriend that you've avoided because you don't really know her well enough to know how to offer the comfort for the loss of her brother that you know, as her boyfriend, you should be able to give her?_

"_Those friends? That girlfriend? Who will never understand if you decide that you need to escape from being Harry Potter if you ever want anything close to a normal life. Who will never want to give up the normal lives they can have here, the other people they have here, to join you in exile so will probably do everything they can to see that you do what's best for them - not what's best for you?."_

There was a lot more of it but those were the main points that the bitter small voice hammered away at, and the more Harry thought about it and the more he argued it out with himself, the clearer it became to him that he really, really wanted to be free of it all; didn't want to be 'The Harry Potter' anymore; wanted to be someone that no one else in the whole world expected anything of or from. He wanted that freedom so desperately that nothing good that he had had with Ron and Hermione nor anything good that he might have with Ginny could stand against his need for it; that the good just didn't outweigh the expectations and judgments any longer.

To be fair, they had been good friends, the best friends, and their 'bad' behavior was nothing more than just the egocentric way people are. But he had been too deeply buried in other people's much too extreme beliefs and expectations, both those he had struggled to fulfill and those he had struggled to deny, from his very first memories; too much, from too young, for too long. Even their normal amount of it seemed an impossible burden. As he had told McGonagall, he was finished.

Suddenly, Harry was exhausted. A Tempus spell showed him that it was just a hair past 9PM, a definitely early bedtime. Refusing to admit that the major cause was mental and emotional, he justified his weakness with the large expenditure of magical energy needed for all the protection spells as he stripped to his skivvies and, forgoing a bath or shower, crawled into the sinfully soft bed of the master bedroom and fell asleep seconds after his head hit the pillows.

OOOOOOOOOO

(Morning – May 6, 1998)

Harry was slowly floating into consciousness. There had been no visions or worried dreams to disturb his sleep and therefore no residue of them to poison his awakening. He felt only softly cuddling warmth, peace and safety. He snuggled deeper into the wonderfully enveloping bedding and dozed for a short while longer until the call of a too full bladder finally forced him out of them and into the loo. Even then the thick, plushy carpet of the bedroom and the heated tiles of the loo floor prevented any massive shock to upset this pleasant mood.

After relieving himself, taking a short invigorating shower and returning to the bedroom wrapped in a toweling robe, Harry found the bed straightened but folded down in invitation to return to its comfort and a bed tray loaded with breakfast resting at the foot of it. Also, on the bedside table, he discovered the current copies of the Daily Prophet, the muggle London Times, Glasgow's Scotlands Oracle in both muggle and wizard's versions, and a large, very large, stack of muggle currency accompanied by an official Gringotts, goblin made, security spelled money belt marked with the initials 'R.A.B.'. Harry started to understand just why Mrs. Black had valued Kreacher so highly. But it was also a bit creepy, quite like the elf could read his mind, and he could see how Sirius wouldn't have liked it at all … … especially if the elf had constantly snitched to his Mistress about what her sons were up to.

Still in limbo concerning the revelations of his subconscious from the previous night, Harry ignored the papers while he returned to the comfort of the bed and concentrated on transferring the scrumptious breakfast from tray to stomach while he conducted an in-depth revision of it all.

He couldn't argue at all with his inner voice's view of the British wizarding world and the total lack of any chance of his ever having anything like a normal life if he stayed in it. Nor could he argue, no matter how hard he tried, that he and Ginny had anything really deep between them yet and his inner voice shook him greatly when it reminded him that,

"_That's right! You don't even know what she wants for a life, do you? Don't know if she's really what you want for life, do you? They say that girls become women like their mothers. She's awfully like her mother already. I know you love Mrs. Weasley but she does aggravate the piss out of you with the way she tries to make everyone's decisions for them. And they say that girls who love their fathers are only happy married to men like them. Are you enough like Mr. Weasley? Could you ever be that passive and easygoing about everything? Do you really want to be? Are you even ready for that kind of serious, life long relationship? Hummmm?_

"_As for Ron and Hermione, even when they were being the best of comrades, during the search for the Horcruxes, it wasn't because they were supporting your decision. They were doing what Dumbledore thought should be done. It's a bitter pill but every time the choice was between what Dumbledore told them to do and what you would have wanted, they always let you down. They weren't raised as you were. They were taught with love and constancy to respect, trust and obey those in authority over their own inclinations while you were taught with brutality and abuse to always trust your own instincts first. They have lives to return to, people to return to while you never really lived while Voldemort existed. They are cut from a different cloth and will never truly understand you, never be able to give you what you need from a true friend. In truth, the three of you were associated only because of your common situation as students of Hogwarts and, now just as then, if you do not force yourself to conform to their view of the way life should be, even if you stay the 'friendships' will die a slow and pitiful death as you grow further and further away from them. Better it were quickly done."_

But the final argument, the clincher, was,

"Look! Stop fighting it! You've already done this. You've already made the decision to leave all of them and all of it! You walked out into the forest to die! And tell the truth, wanker, you didn't want to come back! When Dumbledore gave you the choice, the only reason that you didn't stay dead was because Voldemort was still alive and you didn't trust anyone else to be able to kill him so that your friends could have the same peace and happiness that being dead would be for you! Well, now they've got it. You gave up your death to buy it for them. Now, you have the right to go looking for the same thing for yourself, peace and happiness, until it's the proper time for you to be dead again. It's what your mother and father told you to do. It's what Sirius would want you to spend the Black fortune doing. So get to it! There's a wide, wide world out there, kiddo. Go find it."

As that last echoed in his mind, Harry couldn't help but stutter, " … Siri … Sirius … ?" But the little voice was silent now. He shuddered. Was his subconscious being that devious to get its way? … or had his dead godfather been haunting him? After the cold chills had passed, Harry decided it really didn't matter. It was right, it was the way things were; every little bit of it; especially the part about his dying. He had never known such peace in the whole of his short life as he knew walking into that clearing to give it all up … … No, to finally be free of it all.

No longer able to deny it, Harry knew beyond doubt that he could never live, really live, as Harry Potter. He had to become someone else. The only question now was how he was going to go about doing it.

As he set the breakfast tray aside, the money belt and its decorative monogram attracted his attention. Okay, if he wasn't going to be Harry Potter anymore, who was he going to be? What name? Obviously, the surname came first but what to choose that wouldn't completely deny his parents? Actually, 'Potter' didn't have much to do with Lily so what did she and James have in common that he could use? That came to mind more quickly that he had expected. James' patronus was a stag and, while he didn't know what Lily's had been, Snape did remember her with his doe patronus … so … something 'deer' or 'Deer' something. Oh, why not be right up front about it? Deerchild! He rolled it around on his tongue several times and decided he liked it. Also, it was a 'real' surname. He had gone to muggle school with a Sarah Deerchild. No … she spelled it with an 'e', Deerchilde. Yeah, okay, with an 'e' then.

Now for a given name. Something normal, yes, but with meaning, too. This one had Harry stumped for a while. All the people he would like to name himself after had such odd, so easily connected to his old life, given names; Albus, Sirius, Remus; even Severus, if he really wanted to go that far. Maybe a middle name? But he didn't know Sirius' nor Snape's. Remus' was 'John'. Albus' were 'Percival', no way; 'Wulfric', really no way; and Brian. Okay, 'John' or 'Brian'. Harry spoke them both aloud. He liked the softer, two-syllable sound of Brian. So, Brian Deerchilde.

But a glance back at the money belt told him he wasn't through. He needed a middle name. However, since they were rarely used except for official purposes, Harry decided that this one could be something just for him, something to keep him from completely losing himself. Not 'Harry' but something close enough to keep him remembering 'Harry', remembering why he couldn't be 'Harry' anymore, remembering what his new life was all about. Well, Brian Deerchilde was born from Harry Potter, Harry's son if you will; so, Harrison.

Jumping out of bed, he dressed for the day and then looked into the mirror at an almost auburn, ebony haired, well-dressed, young wizarding adult.

"Happy Birthday, Brian Harrison Deerchilde."

Happy Birthday? He glanced at the date on the newspapers, May 6th; but what year? Looking back in the mirror, he decided he should be a little older. Twenty? Yes, he would have no problem passing for only two years and a couple of months older; so May 6th 1978.

For a few moments, Harry was absolutely euphoric with the feeling of total freedom. Then reality intruded. Okay, so now he had a new name and birthday. What did he do with them?

Harry was sure that in the wizarding world, just like the muggle world, you needed a history; that even the independently wealthy, which he surely was thanks to Regulus via Kreacher, needed documentation of at least his birth from some Ministry of Magic, and education from some school or official testing office; probably more that Harry wasn't aware of. Did wizards need something like the passports that muggles needed to travel? Which brought up the matter of getting out of Britain undiscovered … and where to go when he had escaped it? How to be there legally but seeming to come from somewhere other than Britain? And what somewhere?

Suddenly Harry was totally pissed at Lucius Malfoy for disappearing. With out a doubt, the selfish prick knew everything that Harry needed to know or at least who to go to who did! Harry had to find some way to find the man! After pacing a path in the plush carpet, there was only one possibility that Harry could think of.

"Kreacher!"

With a soft pop, the elf appeared, "Yes, Master?"

"I know you can't find Lucius Malfoy or Malfoy manor but is there any way you could find one of his house-elves? Someplace you know they go for groceries or other supplies? Some house-elf place? Any place you know of that they go outside of the manor?"

Kreacher got a sullen look and didn't answer. Harry thought he might know why.

"Look! I don't want to know any house-elf secrets. I just need you to give a note to one of the Malfoy house-elves to give to Lucius. If I don't get his help, I'll probably end up in a Ministry cell and then Azkaban. If that happens, I don't know what will happen to my property, including you, but I'm pretty sure it will be something you won't like. If you do this for me, I'll do what ever you want about your future; keep you with me, give you to Narcissa or arrange for your head to hang with the others in Grimmauld place; whatever you want."

For a moment Harry thought that Kreacher had fainted or died, eyes wide open and standing up. The elf was completely frozen and Harry couldn't be sure he was still breathing. When the elf finally emerged from this stasis and replied, it took Harry a moment before he understood what the elf was asking him.

"If Kreacher stays with Master, can my Mistress live with us?"

His Mistress? … ? … oh, the portrait of Mrs. Black. Damn! The last thing Harry wanted to do was put up with that harridan. But, … … maybe he could give Kreacher what he wanted without doing that.

"You can have one of the cellar storerooms for your quarters and can furnish it any way you want. That includes her portrait. Will that satisfy you?"

"Other family portraits, too, Master? Mistress would enjoy the company."

"Not Phineas Nigellus. He spies for Hogwarts. In fact, none who have portraits anywhere else. But anyone else will be okay."

"Mistress never liked him, anyway, Master. Kreacher will take your note. It may be several days before it can be delivered, Master."

"That's fine. Follow me to the library and I'll write it."

Harry had to think for quite a while before deciding on what to say to Lucius. It had to be something that the man couldn't ignore but that wouldn't be understood by anyone else if intercepted. In the end, he was rather pleased with himself over what he, with Slange's help, had come up with.

My current situation has become unappealing to me. I would value your advice about securing a new one. I think I would enjoy some foreign travel, even complete relocation outside of Britain. You are so well traveled that I am sure you could suggest something a great deal more interesting than anything on offer locally.

If it would be convenient, we could meet where we last met even though the mutual acquaintance who was at our last meeting is no longer able to join us. I know that midnight is quite late but I won't be free before then.

On a personal note, I do hope that your son is recovered from his fiendfyre experience. I was glad to be able to be of service to him at that time.

Yes, that should do nicely. From the first paragraph, Lucius should understand that Harry wanted to escape the Ministry, not turn anyone over to them. The second set a place, the Shrieking Shack, and time for their meeting. Lastly, if Draco told his father the truth about Harry's saving him in the Room of Requirement, it should make Lucius feel obligated not to ignore him. No names were mentioned and, even thought either Ron or Hermione might connect the fiendfyre reference, Harry doubted even they would be able to figure out the Shrieking Shack one. Damn! Maybe he was a little bit more Slytherin than he had thought he was.

Handing the note to Kreacher, he instructed him to do nothing but attempt to deliver it unless Harry called him.

OOOOOOOOOOO

Harry spent the rest of that day, the next three and part of a fourth cooking his own meals and cleaning up after himself and looking for someplace he wanted to move to. His first step was checking out the travel agent adverts in the four newspapers Kreacher had provided. The even more lurid and outlandish headlines of the Prophet killed any interest in reading anything but the adverts. However, he quickly gave up on learning anything useful from adverts, that lauded everywhere as 'a paradise', and began perusing the collection of travel guides that Regulus had collected. They were out of date but even out of date knowledge of other countries written for a traveler's needs was better than the very little that he had learned in muggle school. The travel guides told him a great deal more than the country's capital and a few larger cities and its major exports and imports as reflected in the muggle Common Market simplified to a young child's level.

The collection concentrated on Europe, the Middle East, India and the Far East with only brief pamphlets concerning Lower Africa, Australia and the Americas. While Harry thought that visiting everywhere else would be fascinating, it was the English speaking countries - Australia, the United States and Canada - that appealed to him for a permanent home. It would be hard enough to adjust to everything else in building a new life without the added complication of needing to learn another language. However, the guides gave him some ideas about where he might start his journey, his new history, before arriving at his final choice.

Another truth that Harry had to face was that he really wasn't anything special as a wizard; just extremely lucky because of his mother's sacrifice, Dumbledore's plotting and the Fates heavily loading things to his favor with their prophecy. The only thing he would allow as his own 'power' was his exceptional reflexes to dodge and duck thanks to his early training by Uncle Vernon and Big D and the gang. Therefore, he interspersed this more pleasant reading with revisions of all his six years of course work at Hogwarts; sans Divination and Potions. While he had begun to appreciate the power of potions, he wanted to slant his study toward healing when he began again with a more balanced teacher. As for Divination, anything to do with prophecies was the one thing he wanted to be as far away from as possible for the rest of his life.

Quite quickly, he discovered that he was up to level in Transfiguration, Charms, Care of Magical Creatures, Astronomy and Herbology. History of Magic was another matter. He found himself paying special attention to this and using the Black Family library to expand that study beyond the British/European focus that was taught at Hogwarts, letting the geographic areas that interested him in the travel guides fuel his study, and discovered a new liking for the subject; often falling asleep quite late at night with a book falling gentle onto his chest as he dozed off mid-page, not from boredom as in Binns' classes but from an honest need for sleep that he was fighting because of his interest in the subject.

Midday on May 10th, after cooking himself lunch, he was sitting in the library writing up an order for travel guides for the English speaking countries that he would send Kreacher to purchase and hoping that the elf would return soon when, oh thank Merlin, that need was satisfied. Kreacher's report was even better than Harry expected. Not only had the elf managed to find a Malfoy house-elf and give him the note but the other elf had reported back to him that (1) Lucius had received the note that morning on his breakfast tray, (2) shortly thereafter he had dragged Master Draco from his bed for a very intense conversation (3) had then locked himself in his study with orders that he not be disturbed for any reason (4) had ordered a second decanter of his favorite whisky within two hours of that and (5) had given the elf delivering the whisky a reply to be delivered to Kreacher.

The reply was brief and concise.

Tonight.

Well, damn! It looked like Harry might be getting what he had asked for. Now what was he going to do with it? This was really it, the point of decision. Once he met with Lucius Malfoy, once he voiced his plan out loud, to somebody else, it would be … … it would be … … it would … BE! What had so far been only a fantasy, a dream, just a collection of ephemeral thoughts, would begin to become a solid reality; made more solid day by day as each piece of 'Brian Harrison Deerchilde' was made real in some Ministry archive, double documented by a piece of parchment stored carefully in the cobra chest; until the weight of Ministry records and pieces of parchment would finally bury 'Harry Potter' and set 'Brian' down whole-cloth in a strange, new world. Then Harry felt chilled by doubt. … … An empty, cold, lonely world? … … The kind of world he would deserve for being so selfish, for causing so much unhappiness to everyone he left behind … everyone he deserted.

As a miasma of self-doubt began to swamp him, Harry felt a not-so-gentle poke in the ribs. He roused from his dark thoughts to find Kreacher shoving a cup of very strong smelling herbal tea under his nose.

"Master is not taking proper care of himself. It is not healthy to stay hidden here. Master needs sun and fresh air and to be doing things, not sitting all day in this room of old thoughts. I have moved my Mistress and her things into her room. Now, Master should move us to somewhere he can do what he should be doing; somewhere away from the nasty Ministry and bossy people that make him hide here." Then grumbling to himself as he shambled out of the room, "I am too old to have to take care of two addled misanthropes."

"Misanthropes?" Harry questioned aloud.

"Thosssse who are hermitsssss. Thosssse who hate and fear othersssss and hide from them."

Harry looked up into the cobra's implacable stare.

"The ssssmall one issss right. You keep hiding here and you will ssssoon be assss crazzzzzy assss the portrait he wassss sssshowing the housssse to lasssst night. And from the thingssss you have ssssaid about your passsst life while we were sssstudying together, sssshould you return to it thingssss will be jusssst as bad there for you assss here becausssse nothing will change and you will jusssst find ssssome other way to hide. It issss impossssssssible to sssstay ssssane without enough freedom. You will be like I wassss. You will begin to think about poissssoning thosssse who own you."

'A voice inside my head, a crazy house-elf, and an entrapped snake spirit,' Harry thought to himself, 'and they are all telling me the same thing; to do what I think is the right thing to do for me. Bloody hell! With that kind of support, how can I be wrong?'

Then he began laughing … not chuckling, not sniggering, not snickering but real laughing, belly deep laughing … expressing a level of happiness that he could not remember ever experiencing except when he was flying.


	4. Chapter 4

They Call This Winning?

By Abraxisdragon

Beta: Tar Irene

Chapter 4 – Dancing with the Devil

(Evening – May 10, l998)

Even though his good mood remained, Harry was a nervous wreck the rest of the day and it was only 10pm when he had Kreacher transport him into the Shrieking Shack. Since Kreacher refused to leave him alone there - "Until Master can apparate without bring the Ministry down upon his head, Kreacher will remain with him." - they both settled under his invisibility cloak and prepared for a long wait. After several minutes of listening to the elf grumble under his breath, Harry made a strong mental note to make sure that his new identity had whatever documentation was necessary to make it possible for him to apparate without attracting official attention anywhere in the world.

Thankfully, for Harry's sanity, it turned out not to be all that long a wait after all. Shortly before 11pm, the shack was scanned by a variety of detection spells, none of which were effective against Harry's cloak, and then Lucius apparated into the room. After transfiguring a piece of broken wreckage into a comfortable, if extremely ostentatious, chair and moving it to the furthest corner from the door, he settled into it and disillusioned both the chair and himself.

Harry had the answer for that. Slipping the tips of both his wands out under the edge of his cloak and aiming them where he knew Lucius to be, he used the holly wand to wordlessly cancel Lucius' disillusion and followed that a millisecond later with an equally wordless Petrificus Totalus from the elder. He didn't know how he could do that any more than when he had used both wands to petrify such a large group when he confronted the fake Aurors or used the elder wand to repair the holly wand, a type of repair which he had been told was impossible to perform when Ron's wand was broken in Second Year. He just knew that he could and was certain it was because of the elder wand, not any sudden vast improvement in his own talent. The wand seemed to really like him. Or rather, the elder wand wanted him to like it; perhaps too much. Oddly enough, he also knew with deep certainty that he had nothing to fear from this as long as, and only so long as, he had the holly wand in his right hand to balance the elder in his left.

Lucius had had no time to react at all. He was still staring at and had his wand pointed at the door. Harry summoned Lucius' wand before removing his cloak, standing up and walking over to stand in front of the man.

"It's not a trap. I've decided that I want to start a new life where no one will know anything about me except what I tell them. I'd also like a little bit of world travel before settling down. But I don't know how to do that; get a new identity and history, get out of Britain without getting caught and into some other country legally. That's the help I want from you in return for keeping Draco from burning to death in the Room of Requirement. You took care of Snape's burial for saving him so help me bury Harry Potter and start over for doing the same thing." Harry conjured chains to secure Lucius to the chair with his arms and legs still totally immobile and then cancelled the petrification spell. "Yes or no?"

Lucius' eyes scanned Harry from head to toe and back again then focused on him eye to eye as his lips curled into an amused smirk.

"My, my, Potter. You do clean up well. And The-Chosen-One deciding to take a runner like we common criminals?"

Sheesh, didn't the man have any common sense? Harry wasn't in the mood to take his attitude.

"Or I could leave you just as you are and have Kreacher deliver you straight to Shacklebolt's office with my compliments. That would keep the Ministry off of my back long enough to find someone else to help me. Hasn't enough happened to teach you that starting a war with me isn't very smart?"

If anything, Lucius' twisted smile grew wider. But Harry didn't think that he was imagining that there was something definitely forced about it. There was no chance that imagination had anything to do with the fact that Lucius' reply absolutely dripped with conciliation. It wasn't close to the way Harry had seen the man grovel before Voldemort, but it wasn't the depreciating tone Lucius had always used with those he considered beneath him or so far ensnared in his web of bribery and blackmail that he no longer needed to take pains with them.

"Now don't be petulant. My first statement was a compliment. Might I also add, I doubt anyone not of your intimate acquaintance would recognize you. The second statement is a truthful expression of shock and incredulity. How can I be expected to believe that you are willingly abandoning what you have fought so hard and suffered so much to win?"

Harry would have loved to sneer right back at the man but didn't think he could do it convincingly.

"I'm not. I've got what I wanted to win; what I had to win because of a stupid prophecy - a world, both muggle and wizarding, free from Voldemort's reign of terror, torture and murder. Now, I want my freedom, too. I want to be able to live my life the way I want without everyone watching everything I do and thinking they have the right to tell me what I should and shouldn't do every minute of it; praising me for something one day and condemning me for the same bloody thing the next. Yeah, I'm taking a runner … from the fame and celebrity that I never wanted; that I think is a total pain in the arse; that for me is a worse prison than anything made from stone and iron. Maybe you can't understand that and that's okay, you don't have to. But, if you ever call me any of their stupid capitalized or hyphenated shite again, I'll do my damnedest to make you sorry for it. Now, are you going to help me, yes or no?"

Lucius' expression had turned thoughtful.

"You are correct. I do not understand it. However, now, I do understand that you are totally serious about the scenario that you alluded to in your missive. Therefore, yes, I will aid you in it in repayment for your rescue of Draco from the Crabbe sprog's stupidity. Actually, it is rather a sweet bit of revenge; stealing their … … " Lucius halted at Harry's darkening expression then continued with a change of topic. "Well, yes, it really won't be that difficult. I have already accomplished similar plans for my family and myself. However, our financial situation had already been well ordered for such a possibility. To involve the goblins to salvage as much as possible of yours might be a great deal more expensive. Not to pry, but how well settled did your parents leave you?"

Harry wasn't about to let Lucius in on the secret of the cobra chest.

"I haven't a clue. But I will need whatever they left me and what Sirius did, as well, to settle me wherever I end up. And I definitely want all the personal items they left me. I expected Draco to be worth the expense of my rebirth to you. And, I won't mention saving Draco again, and you as well, when I saved Narcissa from those fake Aurors since she did say 'help us' not 'help me'. Even though you did say that technically I wasn't required to be so thorough about it, I really think it was the right thing to do because I don't think that Narcissa would have been very 'helped' if she was left without anyone she loved or alone with Draco and without you to take care of them."

Lucius looked a bit disgruntled at this turn of events, which pleased Harry no end. For Harry, this wasn't about the money. It was about Lucius completely ignoring the fact that he owed Harry for his own escape from either a life sentence in Azkaban or being kissed. Harry also wanted payback for Lucius' backstabbing him with a Fidelius charm, probably as soon as Lucius had returned to his manor from the Shrieking Shack. Harry really hoped that this got very expensive for the prick.

When it became obvious that Harry didn't have anything else to say, Lucius grudgingly agreed.

"I am indebted to you for my son's life. I must satisfy whatever repayment you ask. In reality you could have used saving him to cancel your debt to Narcissa. However, since you honored her request for repayment and, as you have just reminded me, did so very thoroughly, I have no choice but to honor yours just as thoroughly if I do not want a life-debt to you hanging over Draco's head. Which I certainly do not! Now, release me. I would prefer to continue this in the comfort of Malfoy manor."

Harry trusted Lucius to a certain extent but not that far.

"No. I'm comfortable where I am."

Lucius clenched his teeth for several long seconds before he could calm down enough to speak.

"Don't be impossible! Just the initial preparation of a believable history that you will not compromise the first time you open your mouth will take hours. Then, you will needs be available for correspondence with the agent for such things for at least several days to approve of or make adjustments to his work until it is in satisfactory condition to be made a legal reality. You must also, preferably in my company, deal personally with the goblins concerning your financial situation."

His last 'personal' dealing with the goblins flashed to the forefront of Harry's mind.

"That's a 'no' to the goblins. They aren't very happy with me. Ron and I had to break into Bellatrix's vault to get something we needed to help me kill Voldemort and we escaped using one of their dragons, who also escaped and made a big hole doing it. Then there's Gryffindor's sword. I used it to pay the goblin who helped us with the break-in, though he thought of it as returning something that belonged to the goblins anyway. Since the Sorting Hat had gotten it back somehow to give to Neville for the final battle, they may want payment for that, too. They may have already taken every knut I had. They also probably want my head on a pike. You'll need to deal with them and … " here Harry added to Lucius' punishment just a bit, "… and make up the difference for anything that you can't talk them unto returning to me."

Damn! Apoplexy looked even worse with Lucius' pale complexion than it did on Uncle Vernon. It was also a look that he had never seen on the oh-so-in-control aristocrat. Suddenly the cracks in the man's façade were extremely apparent to Harry. The massive damage that a year in Azkaban and another under Voldemort's constant malevolence had wreaked on Lucius' mind, body and spirit were unhealed ulcers behind the fragile plaster.

Okay, Harry didn't want to be a complete wanker. Who knew how much of the Malfoy fortune Lucius had left for his, Narcissa's and Draco's resettlement after Voldemort had gotten through with him.

"But, if you end up covering it, I don't need it all at once, you know. Uncle Vernon earned about £50,000 a year; about 10,000 galleons, right. I'll settle for that and half again; G15,000 to start and G15,000 a year until I have it all. Agreed?"

Lucius' coloring was quickly returning to normal.

"Those are very modest terms. Are you certain it will be sufficient?"

"Very. I intend to live cheap and stash most of it for when I finally settle down, anyway. I can figure out how to earn more along the way if I need it."

Lucius' relief and the fact that it was so easily read was almost painful to Harry. Well, damn! He was supposed to be enjoying some revenge; not feeling sorry for the bloody bastard! But Lucius' mask, smarmy condescension and all, was firmly back in place as he continued and Harry's attack of sympathy was short lived.

"Then, I agree to those terms. You know, I had heard the rumors about some sort of incident at Gringotts, something that exceedingly angered the Dar… … Him … but the truth of it seems even more unbelievable than the most over blown of those rumors. Oh, not that I doubt you. I'm just adding it to the list of such surprising things that I am discovering about you. But, back to business. You will need to give me written permission to access your account information and act as your financial agent."

Harry had Kreacher fetch quill, ink and parchment but did not write what Lucius had suggested. Life debt or not, he wasn't about to give Lucius complete control of whatever the goblins would let go of.

Lucius Malfoy has my permission to access all my financial information to forward it to me. He has my permission to make arrangements for moving all of it out of Britain but only after I have signed the final agreements.

After that has been done, he should be given no further access to my financial affairs.

Harry James Potter

Then, at Lucius' instruction, he used a spell to prick his finger and smeared a small drop of blood underneath his signature to authenticate it and held it out for Lucius to read. The man didn't argue about the restrictions.

"If the goblins view the situation as you have described it, I doubt they will part with any money until they have made every attempt possible to get a judgment for damages from the Wizengamot, which could take decades if the members don't decide to use that to punish you by turning you into a pauper immediately, rather than simply making your life miserable until they lose interest. I would wager on the later; the former being a precedent they will not care to set for their own sakes.

"However, I should be able to get an accounting of the funds they are confiscating, to finalize my debt to you, and to convince them to release any heirlooms, personal property and land holdings since the laws will not allow them to make any use whatsoever of those. I will arrange for transport and storage outside of Britain for all that, including the property deeds, until such time as you settle permanently and then a final transport when you do; at my expense, of course. I will also continue to monitor the status of the confiscated funds to mitigate my debt to you if/when there is a Wizengamot decision on the matter or the goblins finally give it up as a lost cause. After all, the rates of interest they must pay and the fees they can charge are set by law and with the accounts basically dormant their profit will be very low. That does for the money so what are your thoughts on an identity?"

Harry's instincts told him that Lucius would continue to cooperate so he had Kreacher bring them tea with all the trimmings and a comfortable chair for himself and released Lucius from the chains to the extent necessary for him to drink and eat. However, Harry very obviously handed Lucius' wand to Kreacher with instructions not to let him have it until Harry told the elf that their business was completed.

"I thought I should keep it as close to the truth as possible: an orphan; raised by an uncaring relative who didn't approve of my parents' marriage; raised basically in isolation from the wizarding world; home schooled through the O.W.L.s, my actual scores should be used; handy in the muggle world because the relative didn't think they were worth hiding me from; recently freed and made homeless, but with a small income, by the death of that relative. Oh, licensed for apparation, too. That one is important. I'll also need whatever papers they'll want to get into some school to finish studying for my N.E.W.T.s.

"I've been reading some travel guides; a little out of date but just a few years before I was born so probably better than anything more recent for this. They mentioned several muggle British expatriate settlements around the world where British wizards sometimes settle, too; own stuff like stock farms, plantations and hostels for travelers. I thought one of those might be a good place where an unwanted relative could be hidden out. Well, not a hostel but a plantation or farm. The books said that most of those are pretty isolated. The guides also said that such settlements keep things as much like Britain as possible, speak only English and such.** That would explain me not knowing a native language. The agent could choose a country with a Ministry of Magic that it will be easy to plant the documents in and I could study up on the area; maybe begin my travels there to finish up with that and keep my travel papers real from the beginning; well, that beginning, anyway.

"Oh, yeah. I've chosen the name and birth date I want and that might be hard to match to real people. So maybe the birth records should look a bit wonky, like they had been messed with to hide my real identity. So maybe I wasn't an orphan but a bastard? Or a half-blood whose wizarding parent was disowned? If you go by the Black family tapestry, a lot of that happens. How does that sound? And I'll need something, spell or potion, that will keep anyone from doing anything magical to find out who I really am unless I want to prove it myself."

Lucius reached for another scone as he smirked approvingly at Harry.

"Very inventive. Not extremely expensive to purchase. Very hard to compromise. My compliments. You are being much more realistic than most people. They tend to attempt to improve themselves, usually too far beyond their true station to be able to carry off the deception. As for protecting your true heritage, there is a spell with counter spell for that. The original spell is undetectable and the counter spell only works if cast by the same person who cast the original. It is not dark but definitely illegal and worth a stay in Azkaban if it can be proven that you have knowledge of it. Ministries do frown on such evasions. I will see that you have a copy of them and will instruct you personally in their casting, if you feel that is necessary.

"A few additions to your plans, however. First, there are spells to learn a language. Not just translation spells but actual learning spells. The reason they are not often used is that they require a time immersed in the language to be permanent. Not practical for many and quite useless for any dead language; the exception being Latin, if one can stomach an extended visit to certain muggle religious institutions."

Lucius shuddered slightly at this thought as he continued.

"Since you are planning to begin your travels in the country of choice the spell should work perfectly for you. Secondly, I suggest that you plan to use that time to also finish your studies and acquire your N.E.W.T.s there; authentic documentation to validate the forged. This also applies to an apparation license. It is simpler to take the test than to acquire a forged document. In the backwaters, your sudden appearance requesting such testing as apparation and N.E.W.T.s shouldn't cause much attention. It would not be unexpected for someone kept separated from the wizarding world to choose to approach it almost immediately after becoming free to do so and it would solidify your history beyond question as long as a total recluse is chosen for your 'relative' and you approach a wizarding enclave at some distance from the location of his/her property. Hummm, it might be best to choose a muggle or a squib, if there were a recently deceased one that fit the recluse scenario. That would suggest no documented tie to your origins at all, simply a hireling, and totally muddy any inquiry attempts."

"How would I explain my magical tutoring?"

"As provided by whomever placed you there; of whom, of course, you have absolutely no knowledge. Un mur en pierre, a stone wall; end of inquiry."

"What about the tutor's identity?"

"The tutor's identity isn't required to sit for O.W.L.s in most lesser countries. Home schooling is more the norm in such a place. If necessary, you may explain him as someone you knew only as 'Professor' who came only twice a week and discussed nothing with you other than your lessons. Just remember, while you will fare better answering any official questioners or potential employers to their satisfaction, for any others you are quite within your rights to tell them they are being obnoxiously curious and to ignore their questions.

"That brings us to your continued education for the N.E.W.T.s. A school full of curious students is the last place you would wish to be with such a cloudy heritage. I will recommend that the agent secure a personal tutor. Those whose salary depends on their discretion are much less curious."

"Before we decide on that, will I be able to afford a personal tutor's salary and living expenses on top of it on G15,000 a year? A school would give me both for the tuition."

Lucius grimaced.

"I will stand good for the cost of the tutor. It is worth the extra expense to me to be assured that you do not compromise yourself, and quite possibly the agent and therefore me as well, living with a herd of gossiping children before you have the time to become adept at your new identity. But it grows late so enough of this for now.

"By our progress so far, you have demonstrated both your recognition of the importance of developing your history as fully as possible for yourself so as to be able to deal with such questioning and the ability to do so. Now we must set the matter in motion. If you still prefer not to accompany me to the manor, we will need to decide on a method of communication and you will need to supply me with the name and birth date you have chosen so that I may pass that information on to the agent with a report of the scenario we have developed."

Harry thought this over for a moment.

"If you take my owl to the manor, can you change the wards and Fidelius so that it can enter it after that?"

"I can spell it to be allowed to find the manor right here."

Harry asked Kreacher to fetch the owl and then continued.

"First, I want to think about all this a little more and then I'll write up the scenario. Second, once you've arranged his services, I want to know the agent's name and to send the information to him and receive his answers myself. I don't want even you to know anything about my new identity." Actually Harry especially didn't want Lucius knowing anything about it.

This didn't seem to surprise or disturb Lucius in any way.

"I understand that. I would prefer you not knowing mine either. However, how then am I to deliver your money to you each year? Also, since we are using the same agent, we should have some way to warn each other should either of us experience something that might suggest that his clients might be compromised. The agent does take an unbreakable vow of secrecy but nothing is totally foolproof."

Harry thought about that for a while then instead of answering the pending question asked one of his own.

"If the agent takes a vow, do the goblins take one, too? Could someone trace where I've gone because of the shipment of the personal stuff?"

Lucius grimaced at Harry's lack of knowledge. "A vow of secrecy is included in all goblin banking contracts. All they will be able to divulge is that those vaults have been emptied and are available for new owners. They can say nothing about nature of the contents or their disbursement; neither to whom the contents were given nor to where they were shipped. Now, have you thought of a method of communication?"

"Yes. How about a pair of communicating hand mirrors? They would be the fastest way to send any warning. Then for the money, each year we can agree on somewhere for my house-elf to meet your house-elf and neither of us would need to know anything about the other's identity."

Now it was Lucius' turn to be thoughtful and, since Kreacher had returned, he spelled Harry's owl to be able to enter the manor while he was thinking.

"Yes, that would be a very suitable solution both for the future and at present, and I believe I know where such a set can be had quickly for a reasonable price. But now, even though I have found this conversation much more interesting than I had expected it to be, I wish to retire. Send the owl to me tomorrow evening and I should have arranged things so that I can send you both the agent's name and your half of the mirror set. That will free your owl for your communications with the agent unless something occurs that requires more than verbal communication between us. Now, will you please release me and return my wand?"

Harry released Lucius and was turning to Kreacher to okay the return of his wand when Lucius reached for the note to the goblins. Suddenly, Harry didn't want Lucius having access to that sample of his blood. Snatching the note from under Lucius' fingers, he folded it and reached for the ink and quill.

"I'll just send this to the goblins myself. Is there a certain one that you want it to go to?"

Lucius pinched the bridge of his nose but answered calmly.

"Senior Accounts Manager Nashtooth."

After watching Harry address the outside of the note, attach it to his owl's leg and free the owl into the night sky, Lucius stood, "May I now have my wand returned?". Then, as Kreacher handed it to him, he spoke rather more sharply, "Good evening, Potter.", and was gone.

'Well,' Harry thought, 'not a blossoming friendship but certainly a workable association. But shouldn't it bother me that just about the most pleasant conversation I've had in a long time has been with someone like him? … … Nah. It's just the proof of the pudding about all this that I've really enjoyed dealing with someone that I don't give shite about what they think about me or what I'm doing; someone that I wouldn't mind giving a right good bashing if he got shirty. It makes everything so much simpler.'

Harry had Kreacher return them to the trunk-house where he enjoyed a peaceful night's sleep, completely undisturbed by any recriminatory dreams. On the contrary, both his id and superego seemed in complete agreement about the new direction he had chosen and also in their intent to convince his conscious mind of the correctness of it with lingering memories of nocturnal fantasies of the pleasures of a life of complete anonymity.

OOOOOOOOOO

Lucius Malfoy did not have such a pleasant night. He spent the rest of it negotiation through his personal account goblin, Nashtooth, for the accounting of, release of, and transfer of all of Potter's inheritances. The only reason that he was able to do this was that the goblins had no proof that would be accepted by a wizarding court of Potter's crimes against them, as only goblins had witnessed them, and therefore couldn't legally confiscate his money; hold on to it, yes, but not do anything with it other than pay substantial interest on it and collect minimal fees negotiated long ago by the Potter patriarch of the time, until such time as the Wizengamot might consider to hear such an 'unfounded' claim. It soon became apparent that they very badly wanted acceptable proof. They wanted that proof, not to go after Potter's money, but to add to the list of Voldemort's crimes against them, properly witnessed by wizards, in order to force the Ministry of Magic, in lieu of monetary reparations, to remove or modify many of the repressive regulations they had been forced to agree to at the end of the last goblin rebellion, such as their current non-entity status with wizarding courts and more favorable banking regulations. Since the only proof unquestionably acceptable to the Wizengamot would be a wizard's testimony, they wanted Potter's confession; authenticated by his blood signature. They were willing to be very 'friendly' concerning his finances to get it.

This did not keep them from attempting to use every loophole in the current regulations to extort exorbitant fees for the accounting and transfers, especially the physical relocation of the personal property. Goblins really got their jollies from 'feeing' unwary clients into poverty as quickly as possible. Most of Lucius' time was spent in mitigating this damage to his own fortune and it ended in the goblins demanding agreements from both himself and Potter to continue doing business through the goblin banking system rather than muggle institutions in return for reasonable fees.

Then came the negotiations to (1) limit these agreements to the life spans of himself and Potter rather than encumbering their inheritors unless said inheritors chose to continue the agreements, cancellation by the goblins not an option should that be the case, (2) secure the goblins' agreement to a fixed fee schedule for all services and an interest rate to fluctuate in direct proportion to that charged on goblin loans for each fiscal quarter for the duration of the agreements, (3) negotiate the amounts of each of those fees down and the direct proportion of interest up to reasonable levels (4) contractually close all the aforementioned loopholes and, as a last thought considering the goblins intentions for renegotiation of current regulations, (5) the goblins' agreement that this contract would be binding over and above any such regulations.

It was well into the day when the owl he had sent finally returned with both business agreements, the accounting of Potter's assets and the 'confession' of Potter's crimes that was the linchpin of it all. Rather than giving Lucius some modicum of relief, the last two documents increased his already raging headache.

First, the confession required Potter to claim that, as The Chosen One, he considered himself an official representative of the Wizarding World as a whole and had committed his crimes against the Goblin Nation as a necessary requirement of his official duty to vanquish the Dark Lord Voldemort, aka Tom Riddle, Jr. Now, while the second part was accurate by the boy's own description of the event, Lucius was far from confident that he could get Potter to agree to the first. However, if he didn't and he had to stand good for the loss of the boy's inheritance, according to the accounting of it, at the reasonable rate Potter had quoted the Malfoys would be paying off the Potters for the next millennium and a half!

Oh, the Potter inheritances were only moderately generous, G750,000 in total and three pieces of property, and Black had left the boy little more than a pittance, G50,000 and two properties. However, there were thousands of bequests, from small to extremely large, recently transferred to Potter that had not named him directly but rather were directed to be paid to the one who finally destroyed the returned He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, You-Know-Who and, from a few brave ones, Voldemort. These bounties on the Dark Lord's head, most of which had surely been generated by the estates of those murdered during his rampages in both his first and second incarnations, had raised Potter's fortune by a little more than G15,000,000 in cash and investments, another G5,000,000 in real estate and an estimated G1,000,000 in personal property such as furnishings, books, jewelry, etc.; all of which were catalogued in detail. The accounting was a bloody tome that had required a feather-light spell to enable his owl to carry it!

Merlin! No wonder the goblins and given up so easily on the transfer fees and future transaction fees and interest rates to get his agreement to keep doing business with them! Their requiring the same from Lucius was probably meant as an insulting after thought. Also, there was absolutely no reason for Potter to become a fugitive. As impoverished as the war had left most of the British wizarding world, with the income he would receive from all of that the boy could buy the Ministry five times over for the rest of his life and never touch his capital! Add this level of wealth to his renown for killing the Dark Lord and the fact that, as both Lord Potter and Lord Black, he would have two voting seats on the hereditary side of the Wizengamot, he could basically own the British wizarding world.

Lucius really wasn't looking forward to attempting to explain all of this to a boy who hated his fame and thought G15,000 per year was an adequate income. As humiliating as the first had been, that it would definitely require another face-to-face was just another nail in Lucius' already throbbing temple. Having absolutely no idea in what direction this new information would make the boy jump, he spent the rest of the morning satisfying his current agreement with Potter by arranging for the "travel" agent to be awaiting contact from Potter and securing the paired communicating mirrors. It was only then that he allowed himself to seek his bed after leaving instructions that he should be awakened immediately when Potter's owl arrived.

His last thought before dropping into an exhausted sleep was to question how an orphan raised in muggle ignorance could have grown into the daemon spawn that plagued him now.

** That such expatriate settlements would exist as late as 1998 is not a very great stretch. In the muggle world, while the USA broke completely from Britain in 1776, it wasn't until the 1931 Statute of Westminister that the parliaments of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Union of South Africa, the Irish Free State and Newfoundland were declared legally independent of British legislative control, could nullify British laws and Britain could no longer pass laws for them without their consent. India was not legally independentent until 1947 and many of the rest of the British colonies did not become independent until the 1950s and 1960s and even later. Also, many of the previous colonies remained part of the British Commonwealth, recognizing Queen Elizabeth II as the leader of the Commonwealth and the Queen of their country. This includes Canada, Austraila and India to mention a few. For a full list .org/wiki/List_of_members_of_the_Commonwealth_of_Nations . All of these ex-colonies also have governments patterned off of the British Prime Minister/Parliament system.

Since the British wizarding world is much a copy of the British muggle world of an earilier era, one can assume that British wizarding colonies would parallel British muggle colonies of earlier eras in much the same pattern.


	5. Chapter 5

They Call This Winning - 005

By Abraxisdragon

Beta: Tar Irene

Chapter 5 – El Diablo Strikes Again

(Late Morning – May 11, 1998)

Harry's conscience had been bothering him since he awakened because he was putting his personal need for Lucius Malfoy's aid ahead of his responsibility as the self-appointed custodian of a criminal in need of a bloody heavy dose of 'rehabilitation', as he had spouted so righteously at Professor McGonagall. This was the driving force for his having spent his morning thinking about the best way to fulfill that responsibility and he had actually come up with what he thought was a pretty good way to do it without needing to baby sit Lucius for the rest of the man's life.

With Slange's advice and instruction, he easily found the spells needed in the Black Library and spent the afternoon writing, rewriting, rewriting, rewriting and rewriting again the necessary document and spelling it into an indestructible, irrevocable, written equivalent of an Unbreakable Vow. Damn! The cobra, with his centuries of experience in his masters' dark and devious business practices, was a treasure beyond anything the snake protected in his many drawers. The magical contract had all of the magical control, weight and consequences of an Unbreakable Vow and two important, to Harry's mind, advantages. It required no third party to cast it and the written contract served as a permanent, unquestionable reference to exactly what was promised without the possible inconsistencies of relying on memory only. The verbal vow might be dandy for short, unequivocal statements but this was much better for long, complicated ones. And, what Harry had planned for Lucius Malfoy was totally complicated. With Slange's help, Harry had sweat blood, metaphorically speaking, to make sure loopholes, if any, were few and far between.

Yes, the method was perfect but Harry still had no idea how he was going to execute it. So, while at first surprised when his owl returned from Malfoy Manor with only his part of the mirror pair and a request to contact Lucius immediately and then irritated with the man for refusing to give more than a vague statement about some 'abnormalities' in his inheritances and insisting on another face-to-face meeting that would further irritate Harry's already painful conscience, Harry quickly changed his mind when he had a flash of insight as to how this could work to his advantage in clearing said conscience by making his plan ridiculously easy to put into action.

They quickly agreed to midnight in the Shrieking Shack once again. However, it did put Harry somewhat on guard that after only a token struggle for Malfoy Manor as the site that Lucius gave up so quickly. He spent the rest of the evening planning his final strategy, enlisting Kreacher's aid in the plan and making sure that the elf would have no problem executing his part of it when Harry gave him the signal to do so. He just hoped that whatever 'abnormalities' Lucius had discovered wouldn't require more of Lucius' help and put a crimp in his plan.

Harry again arrived early and settled himself and Kreacher under his invisibility cloak. Lucius arrived precisely on time and ran only a brief scan to check for the number of people present, again foiled by the cloak but probably a good idea as far as any 'extra' company having been added to the mix, and then made himself comfortable without resorting to disillusionment.

"I presume that you are present, Potter. There is a great deal of information for me to explain to you. May we get on with it?"

Lucius' tone was a bit terse but not unpleasant. Figuring that the man was just uptight at the difficulty of explaining some complicated business to the 'dumb kid', Harry exited his hiding place while Lucius expanded a large ledger and a stack of parchments and spread them across the table. As Lucius explained his massive inheritances, it was a relief to Harry to find that the 'abnormality' in his financial situation was nothing more than there being too bloody much of it and that everything else - the agent's assistance secured, the goblins' cooperation negotiated and the heritage blocking spell and counter spell provided - was accomplished. Yes, normally the thought of dealing with such a massive amount of wealth would have sent him into a tailspin and probably would later, but right now he had something a great deal more important on his mind.

Even the 'confession' required by the goblins wasn't a problem. Harry actually liked the idea of it. It appealed to his sense of justice. The wizarding world had elected him their 'Chosen One', by consensus if not any official tallying, and had done so without having direct knowledge of the bloody prophecy that had set him up for it even before he was born. They had laid the responsibility on his shoulders while the majority of them did nothing, risked nothing, and had then given him plenty of flack for not getting to it immediately when they finally realized that Voldemort was indeed returned. He rather thought it served them right if the goblins got a bit off of them over it.

Since he felt well able to deal with too much money, the goblins and the agent without further help, nothing was stopping him from finally dealing properly with Lucius. It was a very surprised Lucius Malfoy who found himself once again incapacitated and bound to his chair; this time by house-elf magic; which, by the look on his face, he had not thought to study for weaknesses even after his experience with Dobby. Harry had to think that Lucius was totally on the dense side when it came to anything but wizarding magic.

But, Lucius was not just surprised. He was completely undone. The boy was solidly fixed in his intent to leave the British wizarding world; Lucius was sure of it. Even as Lucius had explained the advantages of his newfound wealth and status as a double Lord, the boy had openly shown his disgust at taking those advantages, at becoming in any way involved in "dirty, sneaky politics". Also, up to this point, their dealings had been immanently to the boy's benefit. There was no logical reason for the boy to turn on Lucius … except that of revenge. Yet … in all of the boy's history that Lucius was aware of, Harry Potter was not motivated by that emotion, not even to inaction, but rather the opposite; taking action to protect those he should not have. He had protected his abusive, contemptible muggle family when he could have easily left them to fend for themselves. He had shown mercy to Pettigrew, the betrayer of his parents, not allowing Black and the werewolf to kill the 'rat'. He had risked his own life to save Draco, the most obnoxious bane of his school years. He had not even been able to cast a decent Cruciatus on Bellatrix only moments after she had murdered his godfather. Had Lucius' crimes against the boy been so much greater than theirs? Yet, the determined look on Potter's face left him with no recourse other than resignation. Not even his abject terror at being returned to Azkaban could create any hope, any energy to attempt to influence the boy.

"I suppose, now that you have what you need from me, I will soon be in the company of Minister Shacklebolt and his Aurors."

The boy smiled at him in an oddly sympathetic way; confusing Lucius even further.

"Maybe yes, maybe no. Narcissa will still do better with you that without you but I'm not so sure that is true for Draco and I am sure that it really isn't true for the rest of the world. Remember what I told Professor McGonagall when I rescued you from the fake Aurors? That I wanted custody of you because I thought that the wizarding world should think about rehabilitation rather than punishment and revenge? That it was the only way, if they wanted a world where arseholes like Voldemort couldn't make the mess he made of things because idiots like you believed his shite? Well, that's where we're at. I'm giving you a choice of that rehabilitation with an Unbreakable Vow – well, a written contract that will have the same consequences - to enforce that rehabilitation or a Ministry full of people who either hate your guts for being a Death Eater or will use you as a scapegoat for their own crimes and will give you a one way ticket to a life sentence in Azkaban."

Ah, not revenge, then. Just that seemingly unending sense of honor and justice that must have been the reason the boy was sorted Gryffindor. Lucius allowed a small flame of hope to flare within him.

"Am I at least allowed to hear the terms of this contract before I must decide?"

"Of course. But first we are going to talk about some things to put you in the right mood to accept them. Now, first … "

But Lucius interrupted him, almost snarling his interruption. "I hardly see that as being necessary, Potter! I am quite aware of the mistake I made in following the Dar … Him! Just give me the contract!"

Harry rubbed his temples and took several deep breaths to calm himself. It was going to be a long night. "No, Mr. Malfoy, I don't think you are aware of your real mistakes; the ones that you are still making. The first is your blind pureblood prejudice. The second is the idea that you have the right, the God given right just because your name is Malfoy, to force that prejudice onto other people. Those mistakes are what allowed Voldemort to sucker you into following him. Bloody hell! He was a half-blood himself. There was no way he believed the shite he spouted to get you under his thumb. He told you exactly what he knew you wanted to hear to puff up your giant ego. He played all of you purebloods like cheap pianos. He got his jollies from suckering all of you too proud purebloods into allowing him to mark you like branded cattle and have you groveling at his feet like house elves; turning yourselves into monsters, making yourselves worse that animals, to take out his vengeance on his muggle father and witch mother for his ever having been born by degrading, torturing, mutilating, murdering and destroying both worlds.

"That's right! For him, it was never about the power that you all worship. It was about revenge. The only kingdom he ever planned to rule over was one populated by corpses, muggle and wizard. Why did you think that he got on so well with and had so much control over dementors and inferi? They were the only even vaguely human shaped things he didn't hate, soul sucking daemons and walking corpses, the perfect citizens for his 'new world'. Hell, he even turned himself into some sort of snake monster that was no where near human."

Lucius had turned pale and seemed almost to the point of becoming physically ill. Harry had Kreacher fetch a pot of very strong tea and two cups. He held one to the man's lips until he had taken several good swallows of it. Then, after a good dose of tea himself, continued speaking.

"The problem, Mr. Malfoy, is that you still believe in pureblood supremacy and Voldemort being a half-blood has probably just made that prejudice worse. You can't see that it was exactly that prejudice that made Voldemort the monster that he was. Let me give you some of his history. First, as far as he was concerned, both of his parents deserted him. The then-Tom Riddle, Jr. was raised in a muggle orphanage. From their records, he knew that his father had deserted his mother before he was born and that she hadn't loved her baby enough to stay alive after he was born other than to name him after the father who had deserted her and him and the grandfather who had kicked her out of the family because she had loved his father. On top of that, he was different. He did strange things that made everyone around him fear and dislike him. Big black mark against muggles, even though he didn't know that's what they were at the time.

"Then he came to Hogwarts to be a half-blood sorted into Slytherin, the bastion of prejudiced purebloods, and researched until he discovered the whole sordid, shameful story of his birth parents and the Gaunt family history. Now, I can't fault Tom Riddle, Sr. for running from Merope Gaunt because it's a fact that she used a love potion on him when he had absolutely no interest in her. But it's doubtful that Voldemort knew that, took the time to find it out. All he knew was that his muggle father deserted his mother, and as a result him, because she was a witch, just like everyone at the orphanage had hated him because of his magic. The killing blow for muggles.

"Next is Voldemort's magical side. Merope Gaunt, Voldemort's mother, was left pregnant, destitute and alone to die in childbirth not only by her muggle husband but also by her magical family because her father, Marvolo Gaunt, disowned and would have murdered her and her unborn child for the crime of loving a muggle. This made Merope's 'crime' of dying in childbirth even worse. What kind of witch can't take care of herself better than that? Voldemort couldn't see, or maybe didn't want to admit, that his mother was such a magically weak witch and so mentally weak that she couldn't survive on her own. No. She must have wanted to be rid of her tainted, half muggle child just as much as his muggle father had wanted to rid of his tainted, half magical child. The wizarding world was now just as much Voldemort's enemies as the muggle.

"It's like a potion. Take a base made up of gross mental instability from centuries of inbreeding in the Gaunt line caused by pureblood prejudice, add abuse caused by muggle prejudice and add more abuse and shame caused by more pureblood prejudice and what do you get? The monster who called himself Voldemort."

Lucius had composed himself to a degree. "You seem to understand a great deal about … Him."

Harry took a deep draught of his own tea. "I should. I could very easily have been just like him. My muggle relatives treated me about like you treat your house elves and my cousin beat up on me every chance he got just like the older orphans did Tom Riddle, Jr. But I could get away from them rather than being locked up in an orphanage. I met other muggles, several teachers and adults at the local play park, who were kind and did what they could, little though it was, to make life a little easier for the scrawny, ill kept and underfed kid with oversized, tatty hand-me-down clothing. Our neighbor, Mrs. Figg, a squib but I thought she was a muggle, was always very kind to me in her own strange way. That taught me that not all muggles were bad. My relatives also tried to turn me against my parents but that didn't work because they were telling so many lies about me that it was just about certain that they were lying about my parents, too.

"When I came to Hogwarts, I was sorted into Gryffindor where blood really doesn't matter and you make friends with people you like not ally yourself with the people who can do the most for you. Also, I found out that my parents were smart, intelligent, and well liked and were considered heroes; that they had both given their lives to protect me rather than deserting me. Even the constant inconsistencies of the wizarding world praising me one day and condemning me the next couldn't make me hate parents like that. Also, the Weasleys and Hagrid showed me that they really cared about me and all the professors, except Professor Snape, treated me very well. The wizarding world was just like the muggle world; some bad, some good.

"But I think that the most important thing was that I didn't inherit a 'crazy as a loon' gene because neither of my parents came from a line of totally inbred crazies whose only claim to anything of value was their pure blood. You don't want to believe that, do you? Well, think about this. Morfin, Merope's brother could talk to snakes, too. But if they didn't answer the way he wanted them to, he would nail them to the hovel door and giggle while he watched them die. And neither Morfin, Marvolo nor Merope, the last purebloods of the great line of Slytherin, had enough magical strength to keep that hovel in good repair or earn a decent living. They ate what they could catch, raise or steal from muggles, and they lived poorer than those muggles, wearing rags that made the hand-me-downs that the Dursleys gave me look good. Bloody hell, they didn't even have enough intelligence or motivation to keep the place and themselves clean!"

Lucius was green again. Harry gave him some more tea before continuing.

"You need more proof. Let's look at the other side of it. Let's start with my mother: a muggle-born witch who was smart enough and strong enough to learn and use the old magic to save my life and knock Voldemort's spirit out of his body. Voldemort, himself, a half-blood whose magic was so strong it scared the shite out of all of you purebloods; whose muggle blood gave him intelligence and ambition that his magical relatives hadn't had for generations. Then there's me. A … what am I … half-blood, three quarter blood … whatever, certainly not a pure blood … who did him in for good. The last example I'll give you is Hermione Granger; a muggle-born who is at the top of our class in both knowledge and practical application of magic. Just compare her accomplishments to those of Crabbe and Goyle, the two closest things to trolls in our year and Flint who failed and had to retake his Seventh Year, good purebloods all.

"But that isn't the biggest problem with your pureblood ideology. The real problem is that you don't realize that if it weren't for the half-bloods and muggle-borns, the wizarding world would die out; not just magically but physically, too. According to Hermione's research, with the exception of a few families like the Weasley, the pureblood birth rate is so low you aren't even replacing yourselves and the number of pureblood lines that have died out in the last three centuries is, I quote her, 'appalling'. She says this suggests the inbreeding has increased low fertility in either the males or females and quite possibly both.

"She also found that a great many pureblood children die accidental deaths before they reach the age to attend Hogwarts, too many; a lot higher that the accidental death rate for British muggle children. Now that just didn't make sense to her. How could magical children be more vulnerable to accidents than muggle children? The only answer is squibs. She suspects that the death rate is the result of culling squibs and that the percentage of pureblood children born without magic is very high. Don't sneer. Neville Longbottom told us that his great-uncle threw him off a pier where a muggle had to save him from drowning and then dropped him out of a third story window to force him to show some accidental magic. That's what started Hermione to looking into it in the first place. If he had been a squib it would have been another of those accidental deaths.

"Anyway, whatever the cause, the low numbers of pureblood children born and reaching adulthood for the last several centuries has decreased the pureblood population while all other wizarding populations have been constantly increasing. That is why you are feeling overwhelmed and outnumbered. You are! A few more centuries and you will be extinct. And it's your own pureblood ideology and inbreeding that's causing it!"

More tea for a very dreadful looking Lucius.

"Now, I know you won't accept Hermione's, a muggle-born's, conclusions. That's why part of the contract is for you to do your own research about all of this and find out the truth for yourself. You would have access to genealogy charts, family histories, all the sources that, as a muggle-born, Hermione couldn't even get close to and can get solid facts and figures to prove it all. Or disprove it but I really doubt that. Hermione is almost never wrong when it comes to number stuff like that. Another part of it is to include Draco in all of that research and changing his mind about all of the shite you have taught him all his life at the same time as you are learning better yourself. The third part of it is that once you have done the research and seen the truth of it, you spend the rest of your life teaching it to all the rest of the wizarding world, purebloods in particular, so that no more magical lines become extinct but are added back into the wizarding world. You see, after both Grindelwald and Voldemort, the wizarding world can't afford to lose any more of its blood; not even yours."

Lucius seemed close to collapse. "You expect us to marry … to breed with … "

"Accept as equals, marry and breed with muggle-borns and half-bloods or let your lines die out. Your choice. Damn it all, Malfoy! It's not the blood! It's the magic! And magic is magic no matter where it comes from! If you really want to protect magic, not just build your own ego, it's the magical heritage, religions, ceremonies, culture and stuff like that that you should be concerned with. It's all of that that you should be working to preserve, to keep alive in a muggle dominated world. Things that you could teach to the muggle-borns, half-bloods and muggle-raised if you weren't so busy treating them like the muck on the bottom of your too expensive shoes. If you don't like Christmas and want the Winter Solstice/Yule instead, then teach it. If you don't like Halloween and want the Fall Equinox/Samhain, then teach it. Spring Equinox/Ostara rather that Easter, teach it. The Summer Solstice/Litha, teach it. And what about the Old Magic, the magic that my mother used but the rest of the wizarding world seems intent on ignoring and forgetting?

"All of us raised muggle walked up the steps to Hogwarts bright eyed and eager to learn anything we could about our new world. Use that! Just remember that they aren't going to want to learn anything from people who openly detest them. More important, they aren't going to want to learn anything from people who act like the people, the muggles, who raised them with love and were always concerned with their safety and happiness are little more that animals! You're going to have to accept the parents, as well, and honor the fact that somehow they created magical children and teach them, too. They are just as interested in the world their children have become a part of as the children are."

"Am I to believe your relatives would have been?"

"No. But that's another problem. The wizarding world needs to make sure that no magical children are ever left with hostile muggle families, like I was, or in muggle orphanages, like Tom Riddle Jr. was. Look at the damn book at Hogwarts, and whatever all the other schools use to identify their students, long before they are eleven and check on them. If they are being abused or have been abandoned, bring them into magical families and raise them as if that was where they were born, equal to any other magical child. But the good muggle parents, the ones who just want their children to make the most of all of their talents, magical or muggle, will be interested.

"And another part of this research and educating the rest of the wizarding world is to stop the squib culling. Hermione says that, according to the probabilities discovered by muggle genetic studies, they have just a little less chance of producing magical children when married to magical spouses as two magical spouses do as long as you make sure they aren't too closely blood related. Those chances are also much better than a witch or wizard married to a muggle. More blood wasted."

"She has been a busy little witch, hasn't she." Lucius was sneering again.

Harry barked back even more viciously, "Cut the attitude. All it took was a little intelligent observation of all of our schoolmates and their families, a good look at the past rosters of Hogwarts students and the birth and obituary notice files at the Daily Prophet. It stands out like a sore thumb. Another quick example: the Creevey brothers, Hogwarts students one and two years younger than Draco and me. Their muggle parents produced two wizards while you and Narcissa have only managed to produce one."

"Perhaps their parents weren't actually muggles." Lucius seemed almost desperate.

"Well, if they aren't, then they're from a line of some squib or squibs who joined the muggle world to escape your wizarding prejudice. Does it make you feel any better to be bested by squibs than by muggles?"

"No!"

"Then get your head out of your arse and do something! Do the research that just might make up for all the damage you've done. How many have you killed, you bastard? How much magical blood have you wasted? How many muggles that just might have, possibly could have, produced magical children have you wasted? All the time claiming, **you bloody hypocrite**, that you were doing it to save the wizarding world! Well **now**, you **are** going to do something to save the wizarding world or you are going to **rot in Azkaban** for the **rest** of your **miserable life**!"

With that, Harry slammed the contract parchment that he had labored over for hours down on the table and physically manhandled Lucius, chair and all, until he was in a position where he could read it. He had moved Lucius physically because he was just too angry to take a chance on what he would do if he pointed a wand at the man. Feeling the need for something stronger that tea, he got Kreacher to fetch a six-pack of Coke then paced the room while chugging the first can and then drinking a second and a third more slowly; doing his best to put a lid on his rage. Luckily, for Lucius, Harry had himself relatively under control when the man began commenting on aspects of the contract.

"I see that you are limiting my ability to do violence very severely."

"That's right. Do any intentional damage to any living creature that isn't commonly thought of as 'food', for any other reason than the immediate threat of death or really serious damage to you or your family, that you have no other way to avoid, and your own magic will use the Reverto Malum Parilis, return equal harm, spell to do the same thing to you. The spell also gets cast if you do more damage than necessary to end the danger. You don't get to kill something that you could just stun or make run away without doing any damage to it. That includes anything you do yourself or anything that you in any way cause anyone or anything else to do. It includes physical, mental, spiritual and financial harm and any kind of influence you could have on anyone or anything else, including your money or just your sneaky Slytherin way of manipulating people. Not only does this make you a nicer person to be around, it also takes care of any possibility of you returning to your Death Eater ways if you can honestly say that Hermione's theories are a load of shite after you finish doing the research.

"Oh, by the way. If I were you, I would start teaching Draco to behave the same way. With the promises to teach him the truth about the research and the responsibility to change the way the rest of the wizarding world thinks about that, your magic could consider failing to make the best attempt possible to teach him the same thing about violence was causing any damage he might do."

"Why didn't you include that in the contract?"

"First, no one has completely control over somebody else unless they use the Imperius, not allowed by the contract, so it would be unreasonable. Second, I don't think that it's necessary. Draco wants your approval more than anything else in the world. Shite, he bloody well worships the ground you walk on. Everything he does is an exact copy of what he sees you do. Changing your behavior is the best way to change his; especially since you can't in any way encourage him to harm other things or your magic **will** hold you responsible for it, so you have to disapprove of any harm he does."

Lucius couldn't seem to decide what emotion to feel about this so changed the subject, "Well, at least you included French cuisine with British for the definition of 'common' food animals. Still very limiting, though."

"Don't gripe. For all I know, you could move someplace where house-elf, merperson or muggle is considered 'common' on the table. Just hope that your magic recognizes the local kind of pig, cow, trout, duck or chicken wherever you settle."

"And the penalty for failing in any of the rest of this is total loss of my magic?"

"That's it. Just like it says at the end of each of the other conditions. You won't even be able to see or sense or use already magically charmed things like a squib can. You go all the way down to muggle."

"Why not just kill me?"

"Because you wouldn't learn anything dead. That's what all this is about, learning. That and doing something right to make up for all the wrong things you've done. Besides, I think that losing your magic is bloody well worse to you than dying. You'll try a lot harder."

Lucius was silent for quite a while then spoke with obvious anger but equally obvious resignation, "So, it is this … this … rehabilitation … or Azkaban."

It wasn't really a question but Harry answered him anyway. "Yep."

"How did someone like you write something as complicated and completely inescapable as this?"

"I had a very good advisor on nasty wizarding contracts."

"May I know who this genius is? To whom I am obliged for this assistance? Whom else you have trusted with your situation other than myself?"

Harry had to smile at Lucius' grammatical expression of his irritation. In fact, it took a lot of control to keep from sniggering.

"Well, you might not consider him a who … or a whom. Slange is a cobra."

The look of incredulity on Lucius face was priceless, as was the look of capitulation that followed it. "Oh, bloody … Shite, just give me the quill to sign this!"

Harry had Kreacher place a small, magically cleaned bowl, a magically cleaned penknife and a new and also magically cleaned quill on the table. The elf then took a death grip on Lucius' leg.

"You have to place the tip of your wand on the parchment; read it aloud, the whole thing and word for word; tap the parchment once with the tip of your wand while saying, 'All this I so swear upon my magic'; leave the tip of your wand touching the parchment while you switch it to your off hand and while you sign the parchment in blood; and then switch your wand back to the proper hand and tap the parchment a second time, leaving your wand touching it until the contract spell is completed. The tip of your wand can't leave the parchment except for those two taps from the time it touched it at the very beginning until the contract spell is finished and the contract is in force.

"I will be touching the parchment with wand tip, too, from beginning to end and will make the second tap with you. At the beginning I will say, 'I witness this agreement and will allow my magic to enforce the judgment of it when the signer's magic can no longer do so', then you start reading. My magic will finish the job yours starts if you end up being turned muggle or killing something the contract judges that you shouldn't.

"I suggest that you prepare your 'ink' before reaching for your wand because Kreacher will immediately re-bind you and pop you to the Ministry if you make even the smallest wrong move before the contract is completed and in force. And you know that house elves can be a lot faster with their magic than wizards are. He'll do the same if you mess up on the words in any way and, trust me, he has total recall. I tested him five times on it. He caught every mistake, all the way through it, all five times. Even the ones I didn't know I was making."

"Which were many more than the ones Master intended." Kreacher grumbled from under Lucius' elbow.

Harry magnanimously took that as a show of support rather than the dig it probably was and continued with Lucius.

"Do you understand all that and are you ready to behave yourself and sign with out any trouble?"

Lucius ground out a "Yes" between his teeth. The truth was that he was willing to do anything to keep from going back to Azkaban and was extremely grateful that Potter was giving him this chance to escape that, no matter how much he hated every little word of the price he would have to pay for it. After all, the boy could have decided to take an even easier route and simply turn him into a muggle as the alternative. Doing that wouldn't have been easy but Lucius had no doubt that Potter could manage it; could manage just about anything, if he set his mind to it. Yes, in all truth, Lucius was grateful things weren't turning out even worse. He just wasn't ready to admit to that gratitude until he had time to burn off some of the hate.

Harry drew both his wands and held them on Lucius as he signaled Kreacher to release the binding. After Lucius used the penknife to open a small vein and bled what he considered a sufficient amount into the bowl, Harry healed the wound. Lucius drew his wand and placed the tip onto the parchment, Harry placed the tips of both his wands on it and said his part of it and Lucius began reading.

Harry felt as if he had held his breath for the whole ceremony and was almost too tense to make the final tap with both his wands by the time Lucius finally finished speaking and made the second tap himself. But he managed it and also managed to stay upright and touching the parchment while a bright blue glow encased both himself and Lucius and then rushed away and into the parchment, draining magic from both of them to seal the contract. Lucius didn't seem to be in any better condition as both of them collapsed back into chairs that Kreacher, who had let go of Lucius immediately when the blue light of the contract spell approached them, had made sure were directly behind them. They both watched rather numbly as the contract duplicated itself, the copy flew toward Harry and the original landed in Lucius' lap.

Kreacher watched the two wizards for several moments and then fetched an ample serving of firewhisky for each of them. As soon as they were able to fortify themselves with that, the elf provided tea; very strong tea and very rich cakes, in each of their favorite flavors and laced with a good dose of strengthening potion; all the time grumbling about "stupid wizards who don't know how to properly prepare for the aftermath of a ceremony".

The tea was drunk and the cakes consumed in total silence. After a considerable amount of time, it was Lucius who finally broke it.

"Can I hope that this will be the last time I am forced to see your face or hear your voice, Potter?"

Harry thought for a moment. "Well, since you don't seem to owe me any yearly money … Yeah, probably, unless something happens that I need to warn you about."

"Good!"

With that, the man stored his copy of the parchment away in his robes, stood up, drew himself into his most aristocratic stance and apparated away. Harry placed his copy of the contract with all the paperwork Lucius had brought him, retrieved the copies of the heritage blocking spell and counter spell and put them in his robes. He then had Kreacher take him back to his bedroom and the paperwork to the library in the trunk house. Laying the two spells on his bedside table to remind himself to use the Black library to verify that they were what Lucius said they were and would do what Lucius said they would, he dropped into his sinfully comfortable bed, clothing and all, and immediately fell into a very restful and pleasant sleep.

Lucius didn't rest as well. He drank himself into a stupor and passed out in the chair closest to his office liquor cabinet.


	6. Chapter 6

They Call This Winning - 006

By Abraxisdragon

Beta: Tar Irene

A/N * Airmid: Healing goddess, protector of medicinal plants, and the keeper of the spring that brings the dead back to life.

Chapter 6 – All plans are in motion

(Late morning – May 12, 1998)

Lucius Malfoy was dragged abruptly to consciousness by an extremely vile odor attacking his olfactory receptors. Jerking upright, he flailed at the goblet of potion being presented close beneath his nose as if it were a spring bouquet. The bearer of the goblet easily avoided his uncoordinated attempts at battery and Lucius found himself the recipient of the infamous, patent pending, Snape sneer.

"Severus! You … … you … … you total … " Conversation failed him as he leaned over and expelled the meager contents of his stomach onto his expensive boots and priceless antique needlepoint carpet. He then dry retched for several more moments before his body finally gave up the attempt to rid itself of toxins absorbed hours ago beyond the reach of his digestive system. Righting himself once more, he fumbled within his robes for his wand only to find it missing and then slumped back into his chair, holding his pounding head, unable to form any further coherent plan of action.

His tall, austere nemesis smirked even more openly. "If you were searching for your wand, it's over there on the floor. It appears that you threw it at the waste bin … and missed." With a wave of his wand, Severus evanesco-ed the mess. "There now. All better. Now grit your teeth, take your medicine and don't even think about finishing whatever epithet with which you were about to slander me or I and this hangover potion will disappear back to your dungeons and leave you to your misery."

While Lucius choked down the noxious mixture and fought to keep it down, Severus poured himself a friendly measure of the man's most costly cognac and settled into a comfortable chair, stretching out his long legs to place his booted feet on the accompanying footstool. He appreciated the liquor while giving Lucius sufficient time for the potion to do its work.

"I assume that your meeting with Potter was … somewhat trying. But really, your wand in the waste bin?"

Lucius paled and seemed about to purge once more. Without speaking, he dug the contract parchment out of his robes and threw it at Severus, who read it through several times before commenting.

"Potter claimed to have written this?"

Lucius snarled, "Worse! He said his advisor was a snake, a cobra to be precise."

The fact that the boy, possibly, could still speak Parseltongue was troubling but Severus didn't allow that emotion to travel beyond his internal thoughts.

"Well, he … or they, as the case seems to be … have certainly tied you up quite tightly. I can hardly imagine the circumstances in which you would agree to sign this?"

"He used that blasted house-elf of his. One wrong move, wrong word. and I would have been petrified and laid out for the taking on the floor of Shacklebolt's office. How does the little swot get them to perform such services for him; even more so, get them to admit to such abilities in the first place?"

"Yes, I can understand how you would find it irritating. I, however, find myself in the position of being required to be grateful for it. Even though my own precautions of anti-venom treatments and an emergency activated stasis spell worked exactly as planned, I do not believe I would have recovered so quickly and unscarred if it hadn't been for the healing talents of a house-elf; something that would not have been thought of by any of us had Potter not demonstrated it was possible."

Lucius grimaced. "At least tell me how you managed to get one of them to agree to do it? I threatened them with everything I could imagine, even had several of them punish themselves severely, with no success. They completely denied any ability to healing anything other than themselves."

Severus allowed his total antipathy to Lucius' attitude show.

"You really don't learn well from experience, do you? If you wish to gain the same favor from them that Potter enjoys, you need to treat them as he does. I negotiated with them. I found it not in the least surprising that quite a few of them feel much the same about your mastery as you do Azkaban. I finally chose a female with a young kit. Since Narcissa gave her and the babe clothing and I accepted it back from them, Yenta has been more solicitous of my health than anyone has ever been, with the exception of my own mother."

After a moment of shock, Lucius made for his liquor cabinet, raging at Severus as he went. "You stole two of my house elves? At least Potter settled for one! Are you intent, between the two of you, to impoverish me?"

"Oh don't play the pauper with me. Remember, I helped you smuggle the larger portion of your fortune from under Voldemort's nonexistent nose. And pour me more of this cognac while you're up."

Lucius was still hissing but did supply the requested refill as he continued to pace, carrying his own drink and the decanter with him. "Yes! And you took a fine percentage for doing it! Then the cost of your relocation, which was exorbitant. Potter's, of course, was completely usurious once the agent sussed to his identity."

"Then his newfound wealth did not prompt him to charity?"

"Not a knut's worth! I'm still liable for the full cost of the double transport of his personal property, his relocation and a competent tutor, as well, until he accomplishes his N.E.W.T.s. All I received for his windfall was a release from paying him a yearly stipend and better terms with the goblins for my own accounts as well as his. For which, might I add, I exhausted myself with hours of negotiations with the filthy beasts."

"Careful, Lucius. That last statement, slandering and demeaning another breed of sentient magical creature, might approach being a violation of this contract." Severus stood and held out the parchment to Lucius. "I suggest you seclude yourself and study it quite seriously before engaging in any further association with another living creature. I will tell Narcissa to order your house elves to avoid you, even to refusing to answer a direct summons, until you feel you can safely deal with them."

Lucius turned ghostly. He fumbled with his glass and the decanter, attempting to take the parchment as well, until Severus relived him of the decanter. After taking the parchment and staring at it for a moment, he collapsed back into the chair in which he had spent the night.

"No … no. Oh, perditions gates! What has that boy done to me?"

'Nothing that you don't richly disserve.' Severus thought to himself as he retrieved his glass and, retaining the decanter of cognac - really his favorite of Lucius' insanely expensive brews - exited Lucius' office.

After explaining the situation in detail to Narcissa and making sure she understood that she must keep her husband in total isolation, until Severus told her otherwise, if she did not want to become a widow or the wife of a muggle almost immediately, Severus made his way back to the hidden dungeon apartment that he had occupied since Lucius had retrieved him from the Shrieking Shack. Once there, he began to very seriously consider the 'Potter situation' and if, or how, he might be forced to allow it to impact his own plans.

OOOOOOOOOOO

In truth, Severus' own plans were rather sketchy. Though he had found himself with a new appreciation and interest in life since his 'rebirth', he had not taken life-preserving precautions because of any personal desire for survival at the time. After being forced to kill Albus Dumbledore, the last living person for whom he had any shred of positive emotional attachment and the only person who could and would have protected him from the vengeance of the rest of the wizarding world, he had very little reason to wish for survival. He had added the task of making preparations for an escape and a new identity to the list of repayments of Lucius' debts to him, basically of ascertaining if he were truly dead and, if not, seeing to his healing, only because he did not care to face that collective vengeance should the Fates live up to their monumental reputation for a vicious sense of humor and he did happen to survive past the end of the war.

No, he had taken such precautions for survival only to, as much as was humanly possible, insure that he would be able to fulfill his vow to Albus to aid Potter until he finally faced Voldemort and his promise to Lily's memory to protect what she had valued even more than her own life. Then, with Albus' later confession and request, he had had the added burden of insuring that the boy received the old man's final message to him.

In fact, at the moment of truth, he must have been certain that the plan for survival would fail. Otherwise, he surely would not have been so indiscrete as to include all the personal memories when wandlessly forcing the pensive copies of the information required by Albus out to Potter. He still could not fathom why he had done that. He would not countenance the thought that he had in any way had any desire for the boy's understanding and acceptance of him! That he had by some extremely demented calculation chosen the brat as a surrogate for Albus Dumbledore! No! It had to have been due to the panic of the moment, his mind unhinged by relief at having been given that almost miraculous opportunity to fulfill his vow, to deliver Albus' final message, at the last possible instant. The most he would concede was that he had considered it necessary to insure the believability of the old man's trust in him to carry that final message and, possibly, had intended it as a goad to the boy's conscience for that hateful "Coward!" he had spit at him on the night of Albus' death.

But whatever the motivation, he **had** done it. And the Fates had laughed hysterically as they saw fit to allow him to survive and suffer the consequences of it; consequences quite disgusting, if Lucius' report of the brat's maudlin behavior over his corpse were to be believed. Airmid* preserve the boy, for no lesser being would be able to, if he continued in that manner should Severus feel compelled to reveal himself to him; a situation that would, should it occur, insure that the Fates had quadrupled their entertainment at his expense by not only arranging for the boy to survive, in opposition of Albus' certain belief that he wouldn't, but also arranging for him to once again become Severus' responsibility!

That was the crux of the problem. Was Severus obligated to become responsible for Potter's wellbeing again should he be forced to honestly admit that the boy's situation merited it? He certainly wasn't obligated as far as his vow to Albus was concerned. The old man's last order, to convey the message that would insure that the boy went to his death at Voldemort's hand, had surely put an end to that. But what of his promise to Lily? Much as he hated the thought, the answer to that was a definite 'yes'. Lily would certainly expect Severus to see her son through to at least acquiring his N.E.W.T.s, generally accepted in contemporary times as the transition into adulthood regardless of the historic 17 years of age benchmark. By that argument, the question of whether Potter's situation merited it was also answered before one even considered the fact that he was determined to skive off, totally on his own, to some completely alien barbaric clime chosen by an agent obviously into illegal black market dealings and quite possibly a Death Eater sympathizer.

Severus rubbed the bridge of his nose as he considered the trials and tribulations that would constitute the next several years of his life. At least, according to Lucius' rant about the cost of a tutor, there would be no need for a horrendous struggle to convince the boy to continue his education. However, Severus could envision nothing but a series of struggles, ranging from small everyday matters to the truly horrendous, in once again dealing with the Potter-spawn.

No. Not so much that now and, loath as Severus had been to admit it, never had been so much that. That had been one of the more difficult parts of Severus' revisal of his past life since surviving his 'death'. If the mistakes of his past life had taught him anything, it was that to avoid similar mistakes in his new one he had best clear the slate of all ancient baggage. He had found the whole Marauder/Lily era to be the worst of that baggage to deal with. The last of it had been his association with Harry Potter.

He had finally come to the point of admitting that it had been his choice to take the much simpler, much less painful path of distancing himself from the boy, and from Lily's memory, by seeing only the hated James Potter in him; that he had never honestly evaluated the boy on his own merits. He had then proceeded to do so and was shocked when he was finally forced to conclude that, other than his unruly hair, deficient eyesight and an inborn talent for broom flying and Quidditch, the boy seemed to have inherited little from James Potter. Even his magic, with its strength in Charms rather than Transfiguration, more closely mirrored Lily's. The finally proof of that pudding was the boy's present flight from the acclaim and notoriety that James Potter would have embraced joyfully.

Many times during this revision, Severus had thought he felt Albus close on his right shoulder whispering, "Just as I always tried to tell you, my boy." Under any other circumstances, he would have defied this spectral nagging, as he had managed to ignore the same advice from the man in life, by abandoning the effort. However, determination for absolute honesty in the process goaded him to continue until he had achieved a laissez faire attitude wherein the boy evoked no strong emotional reaction, good or bad, before he had called it finished.

Now, however, that it was necessary that he resume a protective role with the boy, a mentoring role, his attitude toward him must move away from neutral toward the positive to be successful at it. That meant he must make a renewed effort to honestly see and accept the boy's resemblances to Lily; working through the pain of it and then of setting them aside as resolutely as he had worked through the anger and set aside the resemblances to James Potter. He must do this because he must separate the boy from all past associations. It wouldn't do for him to make the boy a memorial to, a replacement for, Lily any more than both he and Black having done the same for James Potter, if in their opposite emotions. In fact, considering Severus' bisexual nature, he bloody well didn't dare allow his prime emotion for Lily to transfer to the boy, the obviously heterosexual boy, if he wanted to retain his sanity. He could not allow one unrequited obsession, one that had almost destroyed him, to be replaced with a second.

Distancing his view of the boy from his memories of James Potter had turned out to be fairly easy; a damning proof of exactly how extreme Severus' previous bias against the boy had been. Separating him from the memories of Lily was a great deal more difficult; primarily because the boy's tie to her had been the only reason for Severus having any personal interest in him either then or now. Also, this process had already been heavily compromised by his "death bed" weakness of having allowed himself to wallow in one final deep emersion in those unique eyes that he had struggled to ignore for so many years. That 'last vision' had haunted him severely upon his reawakening and had been most difficult to set aside. The boy's subsequent assumption of a new appearance, that Lucius had sworn brought out his physical resemblance to Lily to a shocking degree, was sure to rigorously test Severus' willpower no matter how conscientiously he prepared for it.

A possible salvation was that while Severus had retained the memories he had shared with the boy, creating copies rather than forcing the actual memories into the pensive form, he had still experienced a great distancing from them. Or, perhaps, it was the dual victory of the destruction of Lily's murderer and the survival of her son, thus fulfilling such a majority of his vows to those memories, that had not only allowed his bitterness to begin to drain away and the sharp edge of his pain to dull but had also accomplished much the same muting of his obsessive love for her. At least that was the thought with which Severus fortified himself as he finally felt ready to make the final decision as to how he would assume a position from which it would be possible to mentor Harry Potter.

While he would have preferred an indirect method and association, the direct approach of becoming the boy's tutor had the greater probability of success. It would give him immediate knowledge of the boy's new identity and primary destination rather than risking the failure of discovering that information through clandestine means and he would have immediate access to his student rather than needing to concoct and execute a seemingly chance encounter in which he might or might not be able to establish a continuing relationship with the boy.

As a simple matter of having Lucius', through his new identity who was financing Potter's relocation, supply the agent with Severus' new identity as the choice for the boy's tutor with instructions for the agent to owl Severus his student's country of choice and identity far enough in advance for him to be waiting to greet Potter upon his arrival, it could not fail in the initial execution. It would be Severus' job to see that it didn't fail thereafter. He put off the decision of whether to attempt this in the disguise of his new identity or to allow Potter to know who he really was, or had been, until after he convinced Lucius to cooperate. He had no doubt that sweetening the deal with an offer to forgo the tutor's salary would convince Lucius quite quickly.

OOOOOOOOOO

(Afternoon – May 12, 1998)

Harry had been having a fine day up to this point. His conscience assuaged in the matter of Lucius Malfoy, he had slept well and awakened in a glorious mood. It had taken him very little time to finish his history synopsis for the agent and it was still quite early when he sent his owl, named Quiet by Slange, off with it, his new name and birth date, a request not to inform Lucius of that identity nor the country of destination that the agent would choose for him and a promise to send his owl every morning for any necessary communication until their business was concluded. The one small hiccup in the process was deciding how to identify Lucius without using his name but Harry quickly settled on "the gentleman who introduced us and is paying for this".

His second task, the verification of the heritage blocking spell and counter spell, was over almost immediately after he began. Slange recognized both and verified both the wording and wand movements for both. But, Harry's day was almost ruined by the comments Slange made when Harry questioned his familiarity with them.

"Well, I sssshould be familiar with thosssse sssspellssss. Every Masssster I've had wassss very knowledgeable in their usssse and made ccccertain hissss heirssss were assss well. The firsssst issss conssssidered dark magic by the authoritiessss. They did not make it an unforgivable only becausssse the casssster musssst be of the ssssame blood assss hissss target or one musssst cassst it on onesssself and whoever casssst it can countersssspell it, even if sssself-sssspelled. They were ussssed when nesssstlings were exxxxpelled from the nesssst, dissssowned, or chosssse to sssseparate themsssselves sssso drasssstically from their family. Many, mosssst really, were countersssspelled becausssse the dissssagreementssss were ssssettled. But never the magiclessssssss onessss."

It had taken a few seconds for Harry to realize that Slange's last statement referred to squibs; that Lucius had given him the spell the dark purebloods used to rid themselves of squib children; that the arseholes actually erased the children's identities before abandoning them so that there was no chance of anyone ever tracing them back to their families. Then Harry remembered Lucius' comment about the Creevey brothers' parents possibly not being muggles and he suddenly knew exactly where the purebloods were dumping those children. He was livid and raging until Slange finally talked him down from it; reminding him that the spell fit perfectly with the new history he had invented for himself of the disowned offspring of a disapproved marriage.

Once calmer, Harry quickly recalled Hermione's statistics on those 'accidental' deaths and also Argus Filch and his bitterness toward the students for being able to perform magic when he couldn't. Life as an unaware muggle didn't seem so bad compared to either of those outcomes. Then he found himself taking comfort in the thought that many of those reported deaths could have been cover-ups for abandonment and the children had not been killed but had lived and been happy as muggles. His next thought was that a lesser evil was still evil and Mrs. Figg had seemed to be happy still connected to the magical world even though she couldn't do the magic herself.

Tired of spinning in moral circles, he allowed Slange to prod him into beginning on the problem of his massive inheritances. He found the moral questions there much simpler. Everything from his parents and Sirius was his. All the rest was intended to end Voldemort's evil and that's what it should be used for; to repair as much of the damage that Voldemort had caused as it was possible to repair. He began a list.

The first thought that came to his mind was providing homes and education for all children orphaned by the war like Remus' and Tonks' son, Teddy; regardless of the side their parents had supported or what type of magical people they were. This led to the need to repeal all the stupid laws legalizing injustice against all magical people that were considered non-wizards, werewolves like Remus and half-breeds like Hagrid and probably Professor Flitwick, and the really non-wizards like the centaurs, merpeople, goblins and house elves. Then the job would be to pass laws that would assure them equal rights to all areas of the wizarding world they chose to participate in, including Ministry employment, the lower courts and the Wizengamot and a Hogwarts education. That led to making sure there was free and later, when they were able to get jobs and pay for it, at cost wolfsbane for all werewolves and more research to find a real cure for it.

Then he went back to the orphans to include those muggle-raised, like Tom Riddle, Jr. and himself, and muggle-borns who were not accepted by their muggle parents or caregivers and their need to be found, rescued from the abuse and provided good homes in the magical world long before they received their Hogwarts letters. The first incident of accidental magic would be a good time to start checking on them. The next on his list was the education of muggle raised and muggle-born who did not require rescue and their families and caregivers in the ways of the wizarding world; again at the first incident of accidental magic.

Then he returned to his rant about the spells. He listed the need to stop the culling of squibs, whether by murder or abandonment, by providing assistance to the families willing to raise their squibs in the magical world but with muggle training and education to prepare them to make their own choice of which world they preferred when they came of age. If their birth families refused to provide that home and training, they should be treated the same as the rescued muggle raised and muggle-born; a reverse rescue and education, as it were, but in the magical world and in the same individual and group homes as the magical rescued; their shared situation a bond between them rather than the opposing causes of it being divisive.

Somewhat as an after thought, he listed giving assistance to those requiring physical and mental rehabilitation or custodial care due to war injuries. St. Mungos seemed to do a bang up job of that but there were probably people like Neville's parents whose families didn't have the money that the Longbottoms had.

As he read all of this over again, Harry was rather proud of himself. He knew that many people would think first about rebuilding the physical damage of the war. Well, leave them to it. To his mind it was more important to take care of people and he thought his list did a damn fine job of that. Now, he just had to choose the right people; people who would support these changes just as much as he did and would do their best to see to it that what he wanted to happened did happen; people who could be trusted to see that the money was used for what it was intended and not to line their own pockets first.

It really didn't take much time to decide that, almost a no-brainer. He wrote a cover sheet for his list that assigned all the 'bounty' inheritances to a trust fund for the purpose of accomplishing the list and named Mr. and Mrs. Weasley and a goblin of Gringotts choice as the chief custodians of the trust and Hermione, Ginny, Luna, Neville, Ron, Bill, George and four others of their choice and five more goblins of Gringotts choice as assistant custodians. He then named Hermione and Neville to succeed Mr. and Mrs. Weasley with goblin successors to be chosen by Gringotts.

That left him feeling rather smug. So Hermione was so adamant that **he** do something about everything? Well, lets see how she liked that idea when the shoe was suddenly on the other foot!

Lastly, Harry assigned the choosing of subsequent wizard assistant custodians and chief custodians to the serving chief custodians; requested the goblins assign a fair market salary for each position; and, finally requested the goblins perform an annual audit of the trust, with the right to legally enforce the conditions of the trust, to prevent waste and mismanagement and to reevaluate salary levels. In a side note, he asked the goblins to review the conditions he had set for the trust and inform him of any recommendations they might have for changes and/or additions to it before they created the finalized documents for his signature. He also ask them to consider the trust's obligation to seek legal equality for non-wizard magical people and the advantage this could be to them when proposing their fees for performing the annual audits and the interest rate they would pay on the trust account. He ended with a promise to send his owl every day at noon to carry any communications necessary until all business between them was concluded.

By the time he had finished all this, Quiet had returned from his delivery to the agent. Since the owl seemed to feel up to another delivery, Harry made copies for himself and sent the trust paperwork and the signed agreement that Lucius had negotiated off to the goblins straight away. He made a mental note, however, to have Quiet make only one daily trip from now on, first to the agent and then on to the goblins before returning to Harry. The goblins would know his new identity and where his withdrawals were being made after he relocated so anything the agent sent him wouldn't tell them anything they wouldn't know anyway but the agent didn't need to be tempted by information about his finances. If he had something to send to the goblins he would use Quiet for only that and send Kreacher to the agent that day.

On second though, he decided to use Kreacher all the time for the agent and Quiet all the time for the goblins. He really would have preferred to use Kreacher for both if it hadn't been for that goblin dietary problem. Maybe he should add a law to the list for the Ministry about making it illegal to eat anything you could hold a conversation with once the language differences were sorted out. Yeah, he would definitely do that!

After a late lunch, Kreacher having placed it in front of Harry the moment Quiet had left while giving him a disapproving glare that pointedly included the library clock, Harry filled the rest of the afternoon with locating and mastering the Lingua Paternus, native language, spell that Lucius had forgotten to give him and then catching up on his reading of the Daily Prophet. He had been intentionally ignoring the rag but thought, now that his plans for escape were so well begun, he should be able to deal with their trash without going off the deep end about anything.

Happily, the state of the British wizarding world turned out to be better than he had expected, particularly as far as it concerned him. Shacklebolt seemed to have whipped the Ministry, and possibly the Daily Prophet, into line very quickly. The Death Eater trials were underway and justice was being dealt out as quickly as a deck of cards. It was Veritaserum all round and very little testimony other that that of the accused. Names of other Voldemort supporters were also being extracted during those testimonies.

Hardliners were being chucked through the Veil; a long bad moment with that for Harry but not a punishment he was going to argue with. Willing participants with a lesser list of crimes were being sent to Azkaban for varying lengths of time with hard labor rebuilding what they had destroyed as part of that. Unwilling participants, those who had accepted the mark because of family pressure or threats to loved ones, were sentenced to the labor only and house arrest in their own homes otherwise. Those under 17 or not having yet taken their N.E.W.T.s were being punished but, depending on the depth of their commitment to Voldemort and the severity of their crimes, many were being given lenience with no time in Azkaban and shorter labor sentences.

This new, for the wizarding world, approach to justice pleased Harry no end but what he really enjoyed most was that those who hadn't been marked but had taken bribes to spy and/or do political favors and influence others to support them in that were also getting hard labor with house arrest and a lot longer sentences than the unwillingly marked. They were also paying really big, big fines and banned from Ministry employment and the Wizengamot for life.

As for his own status, he couldn't find out anything. Not one word about him or the Malfoys appeared in the Prophet once the trials began. The only reason he could imagine for this was that Shacklebolt was responsible for it. This gave Harry pause for thought. Bottom line, it didn't matter if the man was doing it primarily to cover for the Ministry or not; it was in Harry's best interest as well. But it wouldn't last forever, probably only until the end of the trials.

After discussing it with Slange, Harry had to agree with the cobra that it would also be to his advantage to give Shacklebolt some way to placate the public before the shite hit the fan again; have the question of Lucius' punishment answered in the middle of all the other Death Eater punishments and just as quickly done with in the public mind. It was the same with the question of the fate of their "Chosen One", over with in the rest of the brouhaha.

Harry made copies of the trust paperwork and the vow contract and wrote a cover letter to go with them.

Minister Shacklebolt,

Since you have kept my name out of the Prophet and seem to be doing your best to protect me, I decided to do what I can to help you keep everyone off of your back about what I have done.

The contract signed by Lucius Malfoy is magically the same as the Unbreakable Vow, just works better for complicated stuff. He has left Britain and doesn't intend to come back, ever. Narcissa and Draco went with him.

Narcissa was never marked and really didn't do anything but try to be the best wife and mother she could under the circumstances. Also she helped me, saved my life in the forest with Voldemort.

Draco was marked and did let the Death Eaters into Hogwarts but only because Voldemort threatened to kill his mother and father. But he couldn't kill Dumbledore when he had the chance and Dumbledore offered him sanctuary before the rest of the Death Eaters got there and messed that up. Lucius' contract makes certain that he will have to change the way Draco thinks and behaves because that is part of not influencing anyone else to do harm to others. That won't be hard because Draco has never really done anything but try to please his father, become an exact copy of Lucius. Change Lucius and you change Draco at the same time.

I thought that dealing with what I decided for them at the same time as you are taking care of all the other Death Eaters would make it no big deal in the Prophet. Tell as much or as little of it as you want. I'm sure you know what will work best.

Now, about me.

I'm leaving, too. I just can't live like I have been any more. I'm going someplace where no one will know about any of this and I can be and do whatever I want without all the Boy-Who-Lived and Chosen-One shite. Please tell everyone who really cares about me that and tell them not to be mad at me and not to blame themselves. It's just the way it has to be for me.

I'm also sending you the rough plans for a trust I'm setting up with the goblins. The money was given to whoever killed Voldemort and that just happened to be me so keeping it wouldn't be right. I thought that using it to undo things that Voldemort and his stupid ideas caused was the best thing to do with it. I don't want everything about it told to the Prophet but at least telling them what I did with the money could keep them from being so pissed about me doing a runner.

If you really want to do what's best for me, don't try to find me and make it illegal for anyone else to look for me – better yet, tell the ones who care about me not to look for me and tell the rest of the world that I'm dead. Bury the 'body' next to my parents. I may come back someday but it won't be as Harry Potter so he really will be dead.

Anyway, I hope this helps you and that you will be willing to help me in return.

Harry Potter

P. S.

Please do your best to clear Severus Snape's name. He was Dumbledore's man all the way and risked more and suffered more than any of the rest of us to spy on Voldemort for us. He only killed Dumbledore because the Headmaster ordered him to do it because he was dying anyway and wanted his death to do the most good for our side, keep Snape in tight with Voldemort to be able to help me. And Snape did help me with the stuff I had to do before I could kill Voldemort.

Ron and Hermione saw the same memories I did and can testify that all this is the truth. The memories are probably still in Headmistress McGonagall's office.

Even if he isn't alive to enjoy it, it would be nice if you could get him the Order of Merlin that he always wanted He really deserves to be remembered as the hero that he was.

As he added the postscript, Harry suddenly felt a lot lighter emotionally, another weight gone from his conscience and his spirit. He hadn't taken time to deal with the Snape question, had avoided it actually. The postscript rather took care of that. It was publicly confessed proof that he admitted to and accepted who and what Severus Snape had really been; that the man had been a hero for the light and had been both loyal and brave beyond limit. It was now perfectly acceptable to his conscience for him to also think that Snape was equally as much a sarcastic, small minded, vicious, sadistic bloody git who had gotten his jollies taking out his anger and bitterness over past injuries on a child who couldn't fight back.

When he voiced this conclusion to Slange, the cobra's comment sent Harry to the floor, laughing hysterically.

"Well, Masssster, no one issss perfect."

Finally recovered but still giggling, Harry summoned Kreacher and gave the elf the copies and letter to Shacklebolt with instructions to deliver it to the Minister's desk and escape immediately. With a huff and a sneer at his Master's attempt to tell an elf how to use elf magic, Kreacher simply popped the documents to the chosen destination without accompanying them physically then walked out the library in the direction of the kitchen. This sent Harry into another round of laughter.


	7. Chapter 7

They Call This Winning – 007

By Abraxisdragon

Beta: Tar Irene

A/N: Servaas – Latin: Rescued

Renato – Latin: Reborn

Sorfozo – Hungarian: a brewer.

Chapter 7 – Two new wizards are born

(Morning – May 26, 1998)

The last two weeks had gone swimmingly. Well … for almost everyone.

O

Lucius had not left his seclusion so it seems reasonable to assume that he was probably not in a very good place mentally. However, the meal trays left thrice daily outside his door were retrieved and returned empty with written requests for the next meal's menu and occasionally more liquor to refurbish the office cabinet. Requests for clothing and his laundry were also found outside the door and those supplies disappeared within as well. Therefore, it was assumed that he was still alive. The absence of his personal attention did not unduly distress his family as, opposed to his many 'business' absences from the manor over the years, this withdrawal within its wards assured his physical safety. The house elves were totally overjoyed by it.

O

Draco was certainly not happy but this concerned his mother's behavior rather than his father's. Narcissa had obtained a copy of the vow and was very determinedly pounding every requirement of it through his thick, egotistical little skull. Also, for the first time in his memory, she was actually disciplining him if he didn't make his best effort to learn Potter's crap. His beautiful, loving mother who had never denied him the smallest thing, even seeming to read his mind to provide for his whims before he could voice them, had ordered a house-elf to paddle his bum … … paddle his bum like he was a baby! … and had stood there and made sure the elf did a proper job of it! … and not just the once but several times! The insult to injury was that the elf was openly pleased with the new order of things and that damned contract kept Draco from retaliating against the creature in any way. This, much more than Lucius' withdrawal, left Draco feeling that his whole world had turned topsy-turvy.

OlO

Narcissa, for the most part, was quite happy. Oh, she didn't enjoy the discipline part of it but she was very pleased to finally be able to have a hand in forming the character of the son she had risked her health and even life to bring into the world. The reason that she gave Draco for the education on and adherence to the vow was that there was absolutely no way she was going to allow his behavior to make her a widow or the wife of a muggle and as a good son he should be willing to support and aid his father in this, which he could hardly do without being both very knowledgeable of the vow and also willing to join his father in his adherence to it. However, her true motive was for her son to do so for his own sake, to do so to keep his future behavior from ever bringing down the wrath of Harry Potter on his own balky but beloved head.

Even though theirs had been an arranged marriage, Narcissa had always loved Lucius desperately but, quite often, she had not liked him very much. She was raised to believe the pureblood rhetoric but had always loathed his fellow Death Eaters, including her own sister; had been disgusted and angered by their gross, animalistic natures and love of sadistic violence; and shamed to admit that the same bestial nature was so easily aroused in her husband. More, she had been terrified of the insanity of the Dark Lord and the possibility, yea the certainty, that Draco would follow in Lucius' footsteps to sell his very soul and grovel at the monster's feet. Yes, she was very grateful, beyond grateful, to Potter for having ended any possibility of Draco continuing down that path and of Lucius returning to his old ways but she deeply feared and would do anything to prevent the young man's too honest, too appropriate justice from paying a similar visitation to her son; the one person she loved above all others, even Lucius.

She felt very confident of her ability to take advantage of this opportunity to remold Draco into a person and a family patriarch to be proud of. So, yes, Narcissa was quite happy.

OlO

Severus Snape would not admit to being 'happy'. Severus Snape didn't do 'happy'. He would allow that he was content in a way that he couldn't remember having ever been before.

He had secured the position of Potter's tutor and had perfected his new look for a new life; one that he was fairly certain Potter would not see through, since he had decided that their new association would fare much better without the burden of their past history. Severus had always been very adept at segregating the various parts of his dual life. He was now putting an even greater effort into separating his past life from his future one; burying his true past history beneath a fully fleshed creation of his new identity's past history. He was determined that Brian Harrison Deerchilde would be just as new an acquaintance to Servaas Renato Sorfozo as the tutor was to the boy.

It turned out that the agent, while a black market genius, was anything but a supporter of Voldemort or any of his public ideals. He had also sussed out Severus' true identity as well as Potter's and required a personal affirmation of the Daily Prophet report on his "heroism", an embarrassingly overemotional piece that was surely at Potter's instigation, bloody Gryffindor, before agreeing to allow Severus the tutor's position. He had then made adjustments to Severus' identity, at Lucius' expense, so that his history contained several parallels to Potter's new history to give some common ground to their association and to explain why Servaas Sorfozo wasn't a native of the country of choice. Lastly, the agent had purchased a residence large enough for the both of them in Severus' new name, again at Lucius' expense. No, not a Death Eater supporter in the least. It was doubtful that what Lucius had saved in tutor's salary broke even with these new expenses; something that the agent and Severus shared a sadistic chuckle over.

His personal life was also progressing quite well. He had been extremely busy looting the manor storage cabinets of their most expensive potions ingredients as well as a goodly supply of the more normal ones. Since Voldemort had been as obsessed as any Master of Potions in his desire for both mundane and exotic ingredients, Severus was now well supplied for brewing anything and everything that he could possibly need for the next decade or so as well as indulging in some fantasy experimental brewing that he had never been able to afford. His trunk overflowed with the bounty of it. Thank the Great Merlin for inventing magical spaces. He had also made a sizable dent in Lucius' personal liquor stores with transfers to that same wizarding space.

Added to that, his new house-elf, Yenta, although a bit of a nag about his personal habits had proven to be a treasure beyond price when it came to assisting in his laboratory. She was even accomplished enough that he would be able to delegate Potter's education in potions to her and avoid that most nettlesome part of their previous association and the one in which he would be most likely to accidentally reveal his past identity. He would continue to brew but would explain this with the truth – that he was too exacting in his art to have the proper patience for teaching it.

Now, Severus was merely indulging in a newly acquired pastime while waiting the timing of the portkey, at noon today, that would whisk himself and his household away from Britain and his past life, forever. Of course, he wouldn't be caught dead dandling Yenta's kit, Clover, in his arms. Anyone so boorishly intrusive as to witness it would be the one to die. Or, at the least, suffer Obliviation with Extreme Prejudice.

Yes. Severus Snape would allow that he was content.

OOO

Brian Harrison Deerchilde was a nervous wreck.

Everything was going fine and turning out better than he could ever have imagined it would.

His business with the goblins had been given fair weather and a tail wind by a free gift from the goblins. Yes, that **is** correct – a freebie from the goblins! Quiet had returned from his first visit to Gringotts with a nifty looking belt pouch made of black dragon hide with a list of instructions in its use. It was a long list of uses and advantages and the bag simplified business for the goblins but it also did the same for Harry. You opened the bag to activate it and then spoke to it to access any of the functions.

First, it was a moneybag. You said "Withdrawal" and then an amount of money in any currency and, if your account would cover it plus exchange fees, that amount appeared in the bag. You said "Deposit", a vault number, the currency and amount and that money left the bag and went directly to that vault. These deposits retained their currency identity and were used first for withdrawals of the same currency to mitigate exchange fees. This function eliminated the possibility of being robbed for any large amount. The rather nasty consequences to anyone other than you or someone you designated as your agent who touched the bag took care of the same for any small amounts you wanted to carry with you. Harry had immediately introduced Kreacher to the bag as his agent.

With the next function, you could send anything you wanted to your vaults or to any department in Gringotts. You opened the bag, said "Delivery" and the vault number or department name where you wanted it to go or the name of the goblin you wanted it to go to and put it in the bag. This wasn't just for paperwork and small things. According to the instructions, the mouth of the bag would stretch to accept any size object and, once the thing was started into the mouth, the bag would suck the rest of it up without needing to expand any farther and would then return to its normal shape and size. The caution here was not to send anything too large for the size of your vault before arranging for a larger vault and to discuss any large deliveries to your account manager or to a Gringotts department with your manager or the designated department's Head Goblin before sending.

With the third function, you could get anything from any of your vaults by saying "Retrieval" and then saying the vault number and item number listed on the self-updating inventory for that vault. You could also use the vault number and a common classification such as books, with or without a qualifier such as subject, author, previous owner, etc.; or a type of furniture, with or without qualifiers such as the size, color, material it was made of, etc. There was a warning with that function to be sure you had enough space available for whatever the bag would spit out.

Retrievals and deliveries made by bag would not be subject to transportation fees. Well, damn. It seemed that the goblins had soaked Lucius for those transportation fees they charged him. Or, maybe, that was what had paid for Harry's nifty bag.

The fourth function allowed his account manager, Ironbeak, to send anything to Harry. The bag would vibrate for 10 seconds once every hour until Harry open it and then would announce what it wished to deliver with size warnings, if necessary. Harry needed to say, "Hold Delivery" if he didn't want it until later, either because of where he was, who he was with, or the need to arrange space for it, and the bag would begin its schedule of vibration again. If he did want it immediately, he said "Accept Delivery" and the bag would spew it out. On the off chance he didn't want whatever it was at all, he had the option of "Delivery Refused".

The fifth function must have been a really recent addition. If Harry opened the bag said "Communication" and the name of the goblin or the Gringotts department he wanted to talk to, the bag worked just like a telephone with a privacy spell "on/off" option so that only Harry could hear either end of the conversation or could allow others to participate in it. His account manager could also call him. The bag would vibrate but announce a call and the caller rather than a delivery. Harry had the same options of accepting it with or without privacy, putting it on hold or refusing it.

Shite! The goblins were ahead of most wizards by decades if not centuries. Harry was wondering why Lucius hadn't mentioned this when it occurred to him that such a multi-function bag was probably only meant for goblin use and Lucius didn't know such a thing existed. Then, Harry had to wonder how he had rated the extra privilege. Well, they were a warrior race. Maybe successfully breaking into one of their vaults and making his escape riding one of their dragons had gained him some clout in that part of their culture. But whatever the reason, it was a really nifty bag.

With the bag the establishment of the 'bounty' trust was accomplished very quickly with Harry retaining ownership over it and with lesser fees and a greater interest rate than Lucius had been able to negotiate for Harry's private accounts. There was no need to make any new arrangements for his Potter inheritances but the bag made quick work of arranging the sale of 12 Grimmauld Place and putting that money, the money Sirius had left him and another G600,000 from the bounty trust into a trust for Teddy Lupin with Andromeda Tonks controlling it until he came of age. Harry kept ownership of the second piece of property Sirius had left him, an island retreat somewhere in the Balearic Islands, in the Mediterranean Sea between Spain and Algeria – probably where Sirius had hidden out after his escape on Buckbeak.

Harry knew the money wouldn't make up for not being there like a godfather should be but it was all he could do. He finished placating his conscience by telling himself that the person he would be and the life he would be living, if he stayed in the crazy circus the public would make of his life, would do Teddy more harm than good and he was sure that Andromeda would not agree for her and Teddy to accompany him on his escape.

He also used his power as Lord Black to reinstate Andromeda and Teddy in the House of Black and made Teddy the legal Black heir, with the Black Lord's Ring transferred to his trust vault. Since Teddy had Black blood this didn't involve any sort of adoption. As Ironbeak discussed this, Harry realized that Sirius had to have adopted him in some way for him to have inherited the lordship. It made him all warm inside to know that.

The last thing he did was to lighten Slange's load, using the bag to dump a great part of the money and loose jewels in Slange's chest into his vaults, the first to earn interest and the second just for safekeeping. Going through the chest reminded him of all the gold and silver heirlooms that were stored in it as well. With a special dispensation to allow access to it from the goblins, he sent all the heirlooms marked with the Black family crest to Teddy's vault. Harry did this not only because they should belong to the next Lord Black but also because Harry's new identity shouldn't have anything connecting it to a known family.

The Potter heirlooms would stay where they were until he had the time to look everything over and also to decide if he wanted to give it all up or might some day want to take back his real identity. Still, when reminded by Ironbeak of the necessity, Harry made Teddy the heir to his own wealth for the present. But he didn't want to adopt Teddy, Remus and Tonks should remain his parents, so the Potter name and lordship would die with him if he never took back that identity or never had any children who chose do so.

All in all, he had left many major decisions for the future but had taken care of what needed to be taken care of now.

The business with the agent had gone smoothly but not nearly so quickly, depending as it did on Quiet's delivery speed and the limit of one trip per day, instead of a magic bag. It had, however, inadvertently led him to discover a very big glitch in his plans to assume his new identity.

Harry had his new identity, completed history and destination country and city within the first week with plenty of time left to burn the midnight oil until he was sure he had the history down pat and a good working knowledge of every aspect of the place he supposedly grew up in. The agent had supplied comprehensive historical, geographical, economical and cultural details and descriptions, with muggle photos, of his supposed relative, the plantation and the local area. It was Harry's idea to research a general knowledge of the country as a whole and his destination city in particular.

But Harry had had to take a big leap of faith and supply blood authentication for all the documentation required. This is when the big glitch was discovered.

At Slange's warning that his new identity couldn't carry his old blood signature, he had cast the heritage blocking spell before putting blood to parchment only to be kept from doing it when Slange began cursing himself for his stupidity and Kreacher immediately threw Now-Not-Harry out of the trunk-house, completely starkers with his wands clattering to the cave floor beside him, while the elf bewailed his fate as a once again Masterless house-elf.

Damn! When purebloods disowned someone they really meant it!

No wonder Lucius Malfoy had been smirking about it. That bastard knew what would happen and hadn't seen fit to warn him about it! Prick!

After he finished cussing out Lucius, he reversed the spell. Luckily, wands seemed to be bound to a wizard's magical core rather than his blood identity. He had to summon Kreacher to let him back into the house since starkers meant no keys either. After he had gotten dressed again, accepted Slange's repeated apologies and finally told the cobra to button up and just be more careful in future, he called Ironbeak about the problem. The method they settled on was for Harry to go outside wearing his old school robes and taking his school potions kit with him, cast the spell, draw a goodly sample of Brian Harrison Deerchilde's blood using the equipment in the potions kit, reverse the spell, summon Kreacher to let him back into the house, draw an equal sample of Harry James Potter's blood and send both samples off to Ironbeak. It worked.

The goblin then made all the changes necessary for Gringotts, Kreacher, Slange, and Quiet to accept Brian as the new owner of all Harry's worldly goods, including the bounty trust by having Harry sell all of it to Brian for the sum of one knut which Ironbeak had to pay to Harry out of his own pocket as a personal loan to Brian and Brian had to pay back to Ironbeak plus one knut in interest; after the fact, since Brian wouldn't have any money until the deal was done.

The goblin also applied the Gringotts contracts negotiated for Harry's private and trust accounts and vaults to all Brian's accounts and vaults; canceled Harry's previous will leaving everything to Teddy; made Teddy Brian's current heir; and sent Harry a new nifty bag blood spelled to Brian. After they tested all this by Harry again casting the blocking spell, Ironbeak warned Brian that he would have to reverse the spell for any blood sensitive Potter and Black heirlooms and would have to go through this whole process again in reverse if he wanted to reclaim his previous identity.

However, after requesting and getting the return of Harry's bag and Brian's two knuts, he assured Brian that nothing need be done about the agent since Harry Potter had never blood certified any of his dealings with the man and wizards just weren't that sensitive, personally, to magical signatures unless it involved something such as a life-debt or an Unbreakable Vow.

That froze Brian in his tracks. What about the vow contract he, or rather Harry, had forced on Lucius?

Ironbeak requested copies of the contract and all the spells used to create and activate it and called in the whole of the Gringotts Magical Contract Department to look them over. After a lengthy discussion, which Brian basically lost track of after about a minute and a half, they came to the consensus that the contract differed from an Unbreakable Vow because the Vow was between the two wizards involved while the contract was basically between Lucius and his own magic with Harry's magic only invoked after Lucius' magical core was exhausted beyond recovery, irreparably broken. They also decided that since the process had required none of Harry's blood nor his signature and Harry's wands still functioned for Brian there shouldn't be any interference with the contract calling on his magic.

However, on the off chance that there was interference, they decided that, in the first level of punishment, Lucius might not become a muggle but would certainly become a squib with a broken core and therefore no chance of ever regaining any magical power; in the second, he probably wouldn't die immediately but most probably would die eventually from the severity of the physical damage inflicted before his magical core burned out; but, if he survived in the second, he would certainly be a squib or a muggle, as in the first, and physically crippled beyond repair as well.

Brian decided that he could settle for those possible outcomes, especially because it was very doubtful Lucius would ever find out about any of it. He gave Slange a taste of his new blood, re-certified Kreacher with Slange, certified the elf with the new Gringotts bag and made sure that Quite had no difficulty finding his new owner. This went well except for Quite being a bit miffed at his new owner for doubting his abilities.

Ironbeak, a real sweetheart for a goblin, waived all transfer and processing fees incurred. The Gringotts Magical Contract Department waived their consulting fees as well in exchange for the uniquely stimulating mental exercise and the brilliant new method of contract design that they could use on unwary wizards in future. Brian guessed that even the goblins had their geeks.

Ironbeak also returned the remainder of the blood samples and Brian had enough of his to do all the identity paperwork and get them off on Quiet's next run to the agent without having to bleed himself again.

All of Brian's official identity papers, the name of his tutor, and the address of his new residence, the home of that tutor, had arrived this morning and Brian Harrison Deerchilde was a nervous wreck; first, because it was finally really, really happening; second, because the portkey wouldn't activate for two more days; third, because it was finally really, really happening; fourth, because he wasn't wild about living in someone else's house, again; fifth, because it was finally really, really happening.

Slange soon tired of his hyper, rambling, repetitive monologue and sent him off to the woods to "run yoursssself into exxxxhausssstion sssso that you haven't the sssstrength to sssspeak anymore."

This turned out to be a good thing because Brian discovered just how little exercise he had been getting since the final battle and made a serious resolution to not let that happen again, to make sure that his new studies included rigorous dueling training and time off to allow for other physical activities as well. By the time he returned to the cave he had added a resolution to take some training in various types of muggle methods of fighting as part of that extra exercise. Being able to do some of that would let him defend himself from muggles without risking a fine for breaking the Statute of Secrecy and, judging by Draco's reaction to Hermione's right hook and Lucius' reaction to Mr. Weasley's punch to the face, it would give him an advantage against most wizards as well.

The next two days passed quickly with Brian filling the time researching the muggle fighting techniques popular and available for study in his new country.

On the morning of May 28, 1998, his portkey arrived and at noon, on May 28, l998, the young man previously-known-as-Harry-Potter completed his escape from the British wizarding world.

OOOOOOOOOOO

(1 PM, May 28, 1998)

Senior Accounts Manager Ironbeak, having received the approval of Senior's Assistant Granitetoes, pounded deferentially on the ironwood door of Senior Director Ragnok's office. The massive barrier inched open to create a space just sufficient to allow him entry and snapped closed behind him like the jaws of a nundu. With the proper expression of fearlessness yet respect, he tilted his head back slightly, lifting his chin to bare his throat.

"Approach and sit."

Assuming a normal posture once more, Ironbeak made his way around the large conference table and continued on to the far end of the office where the current CEO of Gringotts sat behind a very obviously utilitarian desk. The proprieties having been observed, Ragnok waved him to one of the goblin-comfortable, unupholstered, stiff backed wooden visitor chairs as a cup of steaming Swampfire and a small bowl of crisped righorworms appeared on the small table beside it.

They were of the same crèche and cadre and, though Ragnok was over three decades Ironbeak's senior, they had always enjoyed a close personal association, very close. Neither enjoyed the need for strict adherence to the demonstrations of rank between them but the recent depredations of the one who called himself Voldemort that had elevated both far beyond the levels usual for their ages and experience had also forced the goblin nation back to the hard-line structure of the past to avoid chaos as its sundered chain of command was rebuilt. As he savored the heady liquor and expensive nibble, Ironbeak appreciated Ragnok's effort to extend whatever small courtesies the system allowed to acknowledge that association outside of their sleepingrooms. Still, he didn't take undue advantage, waiting for Ragnok to speak first.

"So, the wizard boy has begun his travels?"

"Yes, Senior. He and his Fatecompanion will be reunited within the hour."

"Good. What is your opinion of the success of our dealings with him? Did he seem aware of and appreciative of the courtesies we have extended him?"

"Yes, Senior. However, though he obviously recognized the value of the fee waivers, he didn't seem to appropriately appreciate it. I believe the most successful ploy was the Lead Field Agent pouch. He was like a young kit with a puzzle ball. He called it 'nifty'; muggle slang that denotes a particular excellence in the object referred to."

Ragnok reminded himself that his young friend's lack of experience was not of his own making and tempered his response.

"You must not judge this youngling by the majority of wizards that you have dealt with. Rather remember your training as a warrior. For rare as that is among wizards, it is what Harry Potter is, a true warrior. As many warriors in their youth, he prefers the strength and sharp edge of steel over the subtle lure and malleability of gold. But do not doubt his appreciation of both. Even at this age, he understands well the power of gold but simply prefers employing others to wield it for him; as the 'bounty trust', as he has named it, demonstrates. When he returns, aged and experienced, and he will return, he will be a warrior in both arenas even more formidable than Albus Dumbledore because he will not have that old one's crippling moral fear of wielding his full power."

"And it is for that reason we sacrificed so much gain in fees? To curry favor with the wizard he will become?"

Ironbeak's disgust at such subservient behavior was obvious in the tone of his voice. Rather than being angered by this, Ragnok welcomed it because it surely mirrored the attitudes of the hidden listeners who were certainly monitoring his office and gave him the perfect opportunity to deal with them just as covertly. However, his response must be harsh as well for the benefit of those listeners. He would atone for that harshness later, in his personal apartments where his privacy could not be compromised.

"You overstep yourself! Underling! I will allow it this once due to the complexity of the situation but do not show such disrespect in future or my discipline will be harsh indeed. We do not curry favor! Nor would it serve our cause with Harry Potter to do so! He would detest such craven behavior as much as we do! As I said, he is a true warrior and as such he expects to receive equal return for equal effort and is also willing to reciprocate with the same. Think on his request that we consider the benefit of the bounty trust to ourselves when setting our fees and interest rate for it and yet not expecting the same adjustments to the contract for his private accounts. Have your mental abilities atrophied to such an extent that this didn't teach you the ways of his mind? We have not curried favor. We have made an alliance. We have generously aided him in his quest for freedom and autonomy and when the time is right for us to request the same aid from him, he will honor our request with equal generosity."

As Ironbeak made to rise, his wounded pride showing clearly on his face, Ragnok continued.

"Sit down! You will not leave my presence until you have written an apology for your disrespect!"

When, instead of being banished to the conference table, a writing table and implements appeared in front of him and his cup of Swampfire and plate of nibbles were also refreshed, Ironbeak understood the game that his paramour was playing and grinned inwardly as he began writing.

End of Part 1


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